


Taste Your Coffee Thin Lips Once More

by Tricki



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: British Politics, Explicit Language, F/M, Goolding Enquiry, Party Conference, Politics, Post-Series, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tricki/pseuds/Tricki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time they kiss they are both drunk beyond description.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Winston, you are drunk.  And what's more, you are disgustingly drunk."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amodelofefficiency](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amodelofefficiency/gifts).



> The title is from 'Mangy Dog' by Jess Ribeiro & The Bone Collectors. A fabulous Australian band you should definitely check out.
> 
> The chapter title is Bessie Braddock's. 
> 
> This is for my Shannix. Xx

The first time they kiss they are both drunk beyond description.  It’s the final night of the Party Conference, and everyone has let their hair down.  Malcolm Tucker is junior enough at this point in time to still do the same.  Some bright spark in the Party (sadly Malcolm thinks the man in question is in line to be the next Foreign Secretary) has rented a karaoke machine.  There is little Malcolm Tucker detests more than karaoke, but tonight he is in good spirits.  Conference has been a roaring success, the PM is exalted, and the Deputy PM has bought him a pint.  Ten years ago if Malcolm could have predicted this moment, he would feel very comfortable about the course of his life indeed.  While he’s pondering all of this, one of the recently elected MPs stumbles onto the stage, laughing.  She’s attractive enough.  Not particularly tall, but a nicely proportioned woman of around thirty with mad brown hair and a nice smile.  After a minute of studying her and scrolling through his mental rolodex of their hundreds of bloody MPs it clicks that she’s Nicola Murray.  Semi safe seat, ran a reasonable campaign, not the brightest MP he’s ever met but not the dullest either. 

Just when he is turning back to his drink, the newbie on the semi-safe margin bursts into You’re So Vain, and Malcolm spins back to her in an instant. 

It’s not that her singing is bad; she’s quite good actually.  It’s that she has opened with “Malcolm walked into the Party like he was walking onto a yacht.  His pen strategically tucked behind one ear, his tie was a Windsor knot.  And all the MEPs prayed that he wouldn’t hate them, he wouldn’t hate them but, Malcolm’s so vain, he probably thinks Conf’rence is about him.  Malcolm’s so vain!” 

He watches her, rapt.  Normally he would be fuming over something like this, but she is hilarious and he finds he can’t help joining in with the room’s laughter.  Those sitting near him visibly relax at his amusement, but even while he laughs he cannot work out what he’s done to this random MP to warrant this.  He’s met her maybe twice for a sum total of four minutes. 

 

When she stumbles off stage with a little curtsey, Malcolm intends to flag her down.  Instead she sidles straight over to him, collapses against the bar and says “Do you do mojitos?  I need six.”

“Thirsty, are yeh?”  Malcolm queries, raising an eyebrow as his eyes flit over her garishly loud green dress.  Malcolm Tucker prides himself on being able to figure people out, and she is already nothing like he expected when he was first introduced to her at a campaign launch event. 

“It was a bet.”  She informs him giddily.  His look of incomprehension spurs her on.  “The song.  Dan pox face Miller promised he’d buy my next drink if I sang a song about you, so I decided to stock up.  Unctuous little shit can afford it.”

 

Suddenly Malcolm thinks he has her all wrong.  Anyone who finds Dan Miller unctuous is clearly someone he agrees with.  And she’s really quite quick with her words, coming up with a whole new set of lyrics in ten minutes just for some mojitos.  “Nicola Murray, right?”

“Yes indeed.  And if you’ve ever forgotten my name before I’m sure you won’t be doing it again.”

“No, that performance was certainly...   memorable.”

“I was in the choir at Oxford.”

Malcolm laughs and downs the dregs of his pint.  “Of course yeh fucking were.”

Nicola slides a mojito across the bar to him.  “Go on, you earned it for me really.”

“Is tha’ right?” 

“Who else would give me enough material for a four minute song without more than a two minute conversation?”

“And here I thought you were a fucking politician.  You’re supposed to be able to make twenty minute speeches out of thirty second briefings.”

“I’m new.” 

Malcolm raises his mojito and offers it to her.  “To the first of many bad excuses you will give me over a long and unimpressive career.” 

Nicola touches her glass to his before powering through the drink.  If she picks up on his insult, she is either indifferent to it or agrees with it.  Malcolm doubts it is the latter.

 

They sit for another twenty minutes, drinking and sniping at each other, before Nicola decides that actually, she’s quite pissed and she is in need of her bed.  Unfortunately, and she comes to this revelation with peals of laughter, she cannot remember where in the hotel her room is.  Malcolm, already trolleyed himself, finds this almost as amusing as Nicola does, and seeks to assist her on her quest back to her room.  After much stumbling and laughing they eventually locate it.  Ordinarily Malcolm would not let himself be so off-guard with one of the Members, but she’s new and small-fry, and actually not a completely vacuous bore, so he’s taking his entertainment where he can get it.  Nicola’s shoes (sensible court shoes that should not have caused her as much grief as she claimed) are dangling limply from her fingers as Malcolm fumbles with the key-card.  There is the beginning of a ladder forming under the left heel of her stocking. 

“Christ these things are as fucking useful as a nun’s twat.”  The Scot mumbles.  After six attempts he kneels down before the hole, regulating his actions as tightly as he can.  Nicola throws her head against the wall. 

“Fancy that.  The big bad Malcolm Tucker kneeling for me and I’m not even a Minister yet.  Or do you only give blowjobs to the PM?” 

“Oi, fuck off, Murray!  Do yeh want into yer room or not?  Because I’d  quite happily get up off the floor and leave you dribblin’ in the hallway all night.”

“I don’t fucking dribble.”  She frowns, itching the top of her left foot with the toes of her right one.  Heartless Malcolm Tucker with the tongue that’s stopped the nation thinks this is one of the most endearing things he’s seen in his life.  And it scares him.

“I bet you don’t snore.”  She says, apropos of seemingly nothing and nudging him with one of her feet.  Either because Nicola is stronger than she thinks or Malcolm is drunker than he expected, the action causes the Scot to fall sideways.  Nicola is laughing hysterically, and Malcolm is almost too dazed to react.  Dropping her shoes, Nicola very carefully bends forward to help pull him up.  Sadly she is not careful enough, because she ends up sprawled over his chest. 

In a moment of reckless idiocy, Nicola leans down and presses her lips to Malcolm’s.  She is demanding and beseeching all at once, and Malcolm gladly opens his mouth to her.  She tastes like cheap rum and lime and mint.  She tastes foreign and wrong, but she is warm and pliant, and _god_ , so inviting.  Were it not for the burning of his wedding ring on his finger, he thinks he may actually find a way to open the fucking door with this useless little swiping device, tear her horrible green dress off her appealingly olive toned skin and spend the night learning all the many different flavours of her body.  But his ring is there, and it is burning his flesh even while his blood is rushing to his groin.  He runs a hand over her shoulder, and she knows that he is telling her this is enough.  She rolls off of him, lying on her back in the middle of the hotel corridor, and begins to laugh again. 

The ease between them isn’t quite restored, but is close enough, and Malcolm will take it. 

After some more fumbling he manages to get the door open, and while he presses her key-card into her palm he looks at her pensively, mumbling “Goodnight, Mojito Murray.”

“Goodnight Mister Fucker.” 

As soon as the door has banged shut behind her, he lifts his hand to his lips and attempts to wipe her off of him, but the taste of mint and lime is still on his tongue.  Part of him wonders what she really tastes like; just Nicola, sans a litre or so of alcoholic beverages.  Malcolm snaps himself back into reality and banishes all thoughts of Nicola Murray.  By the morning the encounter is a foggy memory, and he is glad of this.

He does not touch a mojito for at least twelve years.  


	2. “In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicola does not remember the first time Malcolm kisses her when he is sober. Malcolm is eternally grateful for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is Oscar Wilde's.

Nicola does not remember the first time Malcolm kisses her when he is sober.  Malcolm is eternally grateful for this. 

 

Nicola's interview with the Telegraph had been a disaster, even by Nicola standards.  Malcolm, very unwisely, had utterly offloaded at the journalist interviewing her.  Not about his journalistic practices, but about Nicola’s inability to _not_ fuck up.  He may have asked why she wouldn’t just die before bailing up said journalist and threatening his every orifice until he was sure his comments wouldn’t be attributed.  Even Lord Malcolm of Fuckoffideen was unable to enact retrospective off-the-record status. 

 

So now here he is, sitting in the Opposition’s favourite haunt listening to Nicola fucking Murray lamenting her life on a Wednesday night, trying to resist the urge to commit suicide.  The problem with today, from Malcolm’s perspective, is that Nicola was fucking _worse_ than she should have been.  He’d sat there, watching her come further and further unstuck, partly wishing he could intervene and partly wishing he could set the whole fucking building on fire and just be done with it. 

He may call her useless, but Jesus shitting Christ, she’s not as fucking retarded as she came off today, and somehow it’s always Totally Fucking Retarded Nicola who makes it into mass media rather than Only Slightly Retarded Nicola with whom he works most of the time.   Herein lies the uncomfortable problem, the cause of his frustration.  It's not that she always puts the wrong foot forward, simply that she only puts the wrong foot forward when it's important that she doesn't.  

Malcolm muses over this  while nursing a Fanta and watching Nicola power through yet another glass of the cheap house white.  She complains that it is horrible whenever she receives a fresh glass, and he receives no sensible answer when he asks her why she doesn’t buy something decent.  There is little logic he can find in “Because you drink nice wine because you want nice wine and you drink shit wine when you would like the universe to open and swallow you whole.” 

“Fuck you’re melodramatic.”  Malcolm mumbles with an unsympathetic eye-roll. 

“Well you’re a fucking bastard but I don’t whinge about that.”  Nicola remarks, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye. 

“Yeah, because you’re too fucking busy whining abou’ everything else.  ‘Oh my husband hates me, my children are the fucking spawn of Satan, oh boo hoo, I’m the worst fucking Leader who had the misfortune of being born.’  Fucking grow up, Nic’la.  Yer bit’s gettin’ old.”

“There’s a fucking _club_ , Malcolm.”  Nicola says, voice thickening with the threat of tears.  “I am so shit at this job there’s a fucking _club_ celebrating my incompetence.  Hail fucking Murray.”  She shakes her head and rests her forehead against her hand.  It’s a gesture of defeat which used to be rare when she was first appointed to Cabinet, but over the years he’s watched it become a more and more regular part of her paralinguistic repertoire.  Malcolm Tucker feels no modicum of guilt for this.  Not for the slump in her shoulders, nor the tense threading of her fingers through her now neatly cropped brown hair, nor the tightness in her throat.  He feels no guilt for her train-wreck of an interview, either, only vague regret at letting her do it, and intense frustration that she can’t just be _a little bit fucking less of a walking clusterfuck._

 

“Hail fucking Murray is right.”  She looks at him murderously and he finally unleashes everything that’s been swirling through his head.  “Look, if yeh don’t like having the twats over there takin’ the piss yeh should’ve stayed on the backbench, righ’?  But you didn’t.  _You_ ran in a mammoth fucking leadership contest and somehow you fucking won it.  Skin of yer teeth, but you’re the fucking Leader of a massive political machine, and if you want to fucking sit here wallowing, that’s fine, but some part of that tiny, frizz-haired mind of yers has to know that there’s a direct correlation between you sittin’ here blubberin’ and you bein’ a totally fucking useless Leader.”

She nods at his side, head still against the heel of her hand, eyes clamped shut.  He watches her, taking note of the hint of a tear that creeps from the corner of her eye. 

 

Malcolm casts his gaze around the pub, taking note of anyone who might be paying them attention.  The pub is one of several locales in Westminster where journalists and politicians have a gentleman’s arrangement that nothing that happens within these walls can be reported on, and nothing that happens in the alleyway and car park behind the pub can have names attributed to it, but most of the decent journalists consider the alley and park part of the exclusion zone. 

It’s not really the journalists he’s worried about, though; it’s the Ben Swains of the world, the Dan Millers.  The people who will tactically use things against her rather than write articles in trashy newspapers which will be forgotten tomorrow. 

 

The pub is designed with an oval shaped bar towards the back.  It’s an aesthetically pleasing but spatially inefficient design which thankfully has allowed him to tuck them somewhere towards the wall, facing the back.  Nicola had been in a distinctly ‘flop on the bar and cry’ mood, despite Malcolm’s protestations that the corner booth was more appropriate for a post interview wake.  There are sometimes even Malcolm can’t muster the energy to argue with her. 

“Why’d yeh want to be a vet?”  Malcolm queries, hoping to stop her wallowing before she descends into actual tears and makes a scene.  He’s never seen her fully cry, so he’s worried from a contingency point of view more than anything else, but the risk is always there, especially when she’s this taught with tension. 

“I wanted to help animals.”  She answers.  No nonsense, no elaboration.  A simple fact.  She wanted to help, to alleviate suffering.  It doesn’t surprise him.  Despite her near total lack of ability she really does have, and it took Malcolm a long time to realise this because it’s quite far from his normal assessment of politics, a genuine desire to improve people’s lot, and that it something he respects.

“What changed your mind?”  His query is genuine, even if Nicola is inclined to read a veiled assertion that she’d be better off as a vet into it.  She turns her head, looking at him on an awkward horizontal angle.  “Because I didn’t like the idea of putting them down when I couldn’t fix them.” 

“So, politics because it didn’t involve personally performing euthanasia.  Not the worst reason I’ve ever heard, and _that_ , is fucking depressing.”

“Can we just write all of today off as ‘fucking depressing’?”

“Every day’s a fucking write off with you, Nic’la.”  Malcolm snipes.

Nicola sighs heavily and turns her head back into her hand.  “Good-o.”

“Alrigh’, finish yer fucken wine.  Yeh’ve wallowed enough for one night.”  Malcolm is dialling her driver while he says all this, ordering her car immediately. 

“Fine.”  Nicola replies, swigging the dregs of her wine before sliding off her barstool, shrugging on her coat and following him out the back door of the pub.  Malcolm doubts she would be quite so pliable if she'd stopped drinking forty minutes ago.

 

 

The rain is misting lightly, and Malcolm curses under his breath when he sees that her car isn’t there.  Once upon a time she would’ve leant lightly against him as they waited, before the trust between them began to slowly crack and crumble.  He can feel it.  She feels less like he’s on her side now than she used to, and she was honestly always a little dubious on that fact. 

 _Good_.  Part of Malcolm grumbles.  _She’s finally fucking learnin’ something._  

It had been a sign of defiance as much as anything, though, hadn't it?  That light body contact the Nicola Murray version of humming ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’ under her breath with the clear indication that she'd not been afraid of him.  Of course to some extent, like all the rest of them, she is and always has been a little, but she has been more willing to fight him than others right from the start.  Malcolm liked that in the beginning, even if he was well aware it would make his life harder in the long run.  Now he’s starting to worry that her fight is ebbing away from her, and more to the point, he worries that he is at least partly to blame.  When this article is printed on Friday she’s going to recognise his phraseology immediately.  She's going to be both furious and upset with him for his tirade.  The trust will continue to erode. 

Of course this isn’t a personal issue for Malcolm.  Not at all.  The issue is that she will become harder to control the less she trusts him, but in fairness rhetorically asking a journalist why your Leader won’t just die is reasonably solid grounds for not being trusted anymore.

 

Out of the corner of his eye Malcolm studies her.  The hair at the nape of her neck is curling into little flat ringlets in the misty rain; the neat bob which requires approximately half a bottle of serum per day to make it even vaguely resemble something that could be printed on a banknote is waving at the ends and developing flyaways at the roots.  Malcolm almost wants to smile at how infuriatingly _Nicola_ she looks right now.  Almost DoSAC Nicola.  Almost the woman who came in bubbling with social mobility before the notion of spending money on her portfolio was well and truly beaten out of her.  Part of him wants to know what happened to her, the woman who had some good ideas even if she had no concept of how to execute them, but really Malcolm already knows.  He was one of the ones who helped beat her into whatever she is now: this insecure blathering idiot who burnt her fucking mouth on a cup of coffee in the middle of an interview.  God, he wanted her to be better than this.  All those times when she’s challenged him and stood up to him made him think maybe she even could be.  Alack the day Malcolm Tucker gave someone the benefit of the doubt.

 

Malcolm doesn’t realise that he’s shifted from idly considering her out of the corner of his eye to outright staring at her.

“What?”  Nicola demands, eyes narrowing as if she is steeling herself for a fight.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about at the best of times, Nic’la, let alone when you’re trolleyed.” 

“You know exactly what I mean.  That fucking look!  What is that fucking look?  Most of the time I’m pretty good at picking up on outright disdain, but sometimes you look at me and I’m not sure if you want to throw me in front of a bus or - ”  Largely because of the amount of alcohol she’s consumed, Nicola Murray had actually been well on her way to blurting out the words ‘fucking kiss me’.  She is interrupted by Malcolm Tucker doing exactly that.  He pulls her to him with force, and a little ‘unf’ escapes her.  The motion is jarring for a body that already feels somewhat like she’s on a life raft in a storm.  Malcolm silencing her is never something she takes pleasure in, but when he does it with his mouth, Nicola is ashamed to say she has very few objections. 

 

Her tongue is imprecise and indecisive against his.  She is not demanding or hungry as he expects she would be when she’s at her best, as she hinted she would be that night all those years ago.  Her mouth is laced with cheap wine, and it clashes horribly with the intensely sugary remnants of his Fantas.  Nicola slips her arms under his overcoat, clinging to his sides as much to keep herself upright as to gain a little warmth, a little intimacy.  Malcolm curses her stupid black trench coat for the barrier it creates between his body and her skin.  She is cocooned in gabardine and a cashmere scarf which (she takes no end of pleasure in reminding him) originated in his homeland.  Just as Malcolm is burying his fingers in her hair and pulling her against him harder, Nicola shoves off him as hard as she can manage, spins on her heel, braces against the rough brick wall and vomits violently.  The Scot rakes a hand over his face, wondering once again exactly what in Christ’s name he’s gotten himself into. 

 

Malcolm does not do the gentlemanly thing and hold her hair back or support her forehead, instead he does something much more politically astute: he turns away from her and scans the area for lurking journalists, punters on their mobile phones, any sign of life.  The last thing he needs is vomiting Nicola plastered across every major news outlet because someone nearby is on fucking Twitter; god knows her electoral prospects are bad enough without snogging staffers and vomiting in alleyways.  While he does so he spreads his hand across the small of her back, fingers taking in her damp coat.  He is not actively seeking to comfort her.  Not really.  It’s a reaction to her proximity and her persistent heaving and nothing more.  This is something Malcolm repeats to himself as his fingers gently rub tiny circles over her.  Malcolm’s eyes finally land on her car, sitting patiently with its headlights on just in front of them.  Malcolm has no idea when it pulled up; he imagines he’d been too busy sucking on the Leader of the Opposition’s lower lip. 

 

When she rights herself, her face is pulled into that bemused Nicola frown; it would be endearing were it not so frequent to grace her countenance. 

“Feel better gettin’ that out of yer system?”  Malcolm’s query is only a little biting, idly disapproving rather than blatantly critical. 

“Very much regretting my cheap wine assertion, actually.”

Malcolm laughs shortly and drops a hand to the small of her back, directing her to her car.  He opens the door for her and pushes her in with little ceremony, watching as she lifts her hand to her head like she might go again.  Her breath is toxic, acidic from sick and stale from wine.  She is dishevelled and damp, and actually, Malcolm doesn’t utterly hate her.  He leans into the front of the minivan and mumbles, “None of this goes any further, righ’?  Good man.” 

 

Nicola’s head is lolling back against her seat and she is looking at him with wide-eyed confusion.  Reaching across her, Malcolm draws her seatbelt over her body and clips it securely.  It’s his small concession, a little acknowledgement that he does not actually want her to die at all.  She may frustrate him beyond articulation, but part of him tries to keep her safe, where possible.  Malcolm knows as soon as the Telegraph hits on Friday and she picks him for the source, she will hate him.  Perhaps when that happens he will be able to invoke this moment as some kind of evidence that he is still on her side, or at least wants her to live.  His hand finds her cheek gently, and why he can’t seem to keep his hands off her is a troubling and potentially disastrous question he totally refuses to answer. 

“Now get some rest and don’t hack yer guts up in the nice man’s car.  Alright?” 

Once he’s sure she’s nodded in response, he mumbles “good,” and shuts the door with a decisive snap.  Malcolm hopes a long walk home in the rain will help him dismiss whatever it is that’s going through his mind tonight. 

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning is a clear and sunny one - by London standards at least.  Nicola has never longed for a typical, gray London day more than at this very moment.  She’d allowed herself a politician’s version of a sleep in, only arriving at the Norman Shaw at 7:20am, but she still feels like death warmed up, re-frozen, left in the sun to rot, and then thrown back in the fridge to slow the decay.  In fact, Nicola is feeling so ill that, while she is aware she has a couch in her office which could offer her rest and comfort, she cannot bring herself to move from her current position slumped over her desk.  It is in this position that Malcolm finds her when he is finally granted entrance to her office by Helen at 7:50.  The curtains are drawn and the office is largely dark.  There are cracks of sunlight coming through in places where one of her staff clearly couldn’t quite get the curtains to meet.  Although he can see none of Nicola’s face under her sheath of hair, she looks like she would not object to euthanasia at this point.

 

“You loved her as Pukeahontas, now relive the magic with digitally remastered Sleeping Barfy!”

Ordinarily Nicola is sure she would laugh at this, but right now all she can manage is a low groan. 

“Do you know why being a vet is better than being the alternative Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?”  She mumbles into her arms.

“Because animals don’t get shitted off by yer boring arse stories?”

“Because vets are fucking allowed to take the day off when they’re hung over.”

“D’you know why politicians aren’t?”

“Because they’re supposed to run the Kingdom, and therefore probably be mature enough not to get paralytic while Parliament’s in session?”

Malcolm snorts derisively.  “Because most of them are such seasoned fucking alcoholics that they don’t fucking _get_ hangovers anymore.”

Nicola makes a little mewl of desolation, and Malcolm, in spite of himself, wants to laugh gently at her despair. 

 

“I actually can’t remember a fucking thing from last night.”  Groans the brunette into her desk.  “Fuck, I haven’t done that in a long time.”  Malcolm’s ears prick up.  He’d been wondering when and if his totally sober snogging of her would become a topic of conversation.  He might be saved. 

“Nothing?”

“After burning my mouth on that stupid fucking cappuccino, I remember going to the Hog and then I remember drinking about three glasses of shitty wine, and then I actually have no idea what happened.”  Suddenly her voice hardens.  “I didn’t do anything, did I?  Anything that might, you know...  Get published or anything?”

“Aside from sexually assaulting that midget, you mean?” 

“Fuck off, Malcolm.  I’m in agony.”

“Well, you heaved up yer guts in the back alley.  D’you remember that?”

“I remember the taste in the morning.”

“Now that’s about as fucken charming as an ageing sex worker with gingivitis.”

If Nicola’s head weren’t pounding as if it were being rammed repeatedly by a lorry, she would lift it and glare at him.  As it stands, she is physically incapable of doing so, and this tells Malcolm more than anything else about her current state.  More than the drawn curtains and the lying on the desk.  That she can’t muster the energy to glare at him?  That is both serious and of some concern.

 

Standing before her desk, Malcolm squeezes her shoulder softly and for the first time Nicola’s head raises.  Not the whole way yet, just a slight tip back so her eyes and nose are visible above her arms.  It’s not endearing.  Not at all.  Once he’s sure he has her attention he sets a 48 pack of 400mg Ibuprofen tablets on the desk before her.  She reaches for them with a look on her face that says he may have just presented her with the Queen’s sceptre. 

“Back on the horse, alright darlin’?”

“Right.  Government to win, JB to destroy.”  Replies Nicola with new resolve as she accidentally rips the box in her haste to open it.  Malcolm is surprised when she dry-swallows four in one go.  Surprised and maybe a little alarmed. 

“That’s my girl.”

Malcolm brushes his hand over her shoulder again as he makes to leave, but is halted by Nicola softly calling after him:  “Malcolm?  I’m not your fucking ‘girl’.”  His lips quirk, though she cannot tell with his back to her; this is the kind of comment that ordinarily would give Malcolm myriad complicated thoughts about the evening before, about her rain-frizzed hair and her not unjustified self-loathing. 

 

Luckily for Malcolm, it takes a very long time indeed for him to be able to consider kissing Nicola Murray without the vivid memory of the smell of her vomit rather souring the idea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The interview mentioned is here. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9528308/The-Thick-of-It-BBC-Two-an-interview-with-the-Rt-Hon-Nicola-Murray-MP.html


	3. "Jesus Christ, Peter, what a misjudgement."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time they kiss when they are both sober, each wishes they’d had rather a lot to drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after series 4. The chapter title is Tony Blair's. Malc and Nicola are the BBC's. The rest is my deluded mind's. Enjoy.

Of all the people in his life who Malcolm Tucker expects to find on his doorstep tonight, Nicola Murray is arguably the last on the list.

“Look!  The Glummy Mummy’s come bury Cesar.  Fuck off, Nic’la, I’m not in the mood.” 

Nicola ignores him and pushes past him into his house.  “You’ve just been fucking arrested, Malcolm, I don’t think this is the right time to pick a fight.”

“You don’t get to dictate when I fucking pick fights.  Oh, and by the way, get the fuck out of my house.” 

“Have you eaten anything?”  She asks, breezing through his home like it’s hers.  Malcolm hates how at ease she is in his space.  Malcolm completely fucking hates that useless Nicola Murray, whose life he’s just utterly fucked over, is sauntering through his house like she’s going to fix things for him.  Most of all Malcolm utterly fucking despises what the sway of her hips elicits in him.

“I’m not joking around here, Nicola.  Get out of my fucking house.” 

“No.”  Nicola replies calmly as she pores through his pantry.  “Because this is the point where you finally fucking implode and someone needs to be here to make sure you don’t fucking top yourself in the process.”

“As if you give half an ant’s shit.”  Mumbles the Scot darkly.

“I do, actually.  I mean, Christ knows why...”  Nicola’s voice trails off as she examines a packet of pancake mixture that is no less than seven years outside its used by date with a frown.  Truth be known, Nicola has spent so little time in her own kitchen since she became Secretary of State all those years ago that she could have far worse concealed within her own. 

“What are you in the mood for?”  She queries, closing her hand around an unopened packet of linguine. 

“How about not being fucking charged with a crime?”

“Yeah, well, you fucked my career, so sadly I have no power to help you in any way that isn’t culinary right now.” 

When she fills and flicks on the kettle, Malcolm finally resigns himself to the fact that she is not going anywhere, regardless of any protestation he may make.  They are no longer engaged in a professional relationship, and he has nothing to hold over her anymore.  He has no way of manipulating her out of his house short of calling the police, and really, he’s had more than enough dealings with the Met this week, and he expects the frequency of his interactions with the police will only increase after today. 

 

Malcolm’s kitchen is orderly, aside from the presence of old produce.  It is arranged in the most logical manner possible.  A woman has not been near it for almost two years, and Nicola is sure this level of organisational precision would have taken place after Lucille left and not before.  Lucille’s sense of order was more arbitrary than Malcolm’s.  Alphabetical rather than practicality of access, that sort of thing.  Nicola is grateful of the order.  It means at no point does she need to ask Malcolm where anything is located; an infinitely helpful fact when the person one is attempting to cook for is currently pondering the best way to remove you from their house.  Opening the fridge she discovers that at least he has butter, which surprises her somewhat.  He has no cheese that she can see, but he has a healthy supply of Fanta.  In fact, he is drinking a bottle of Franta at present, and Nicola can’t help but wonder if perhaps there’s a dose of vodka in it too.  Malcolm has had a day that surely warrants alcohol. 

“So far we’re up to buttered linguine.  Sounds appetising.”  Nicola remarks with a grimace.  Malcolm wants to rail at her, but today he feels like he’s had a Hoover attached to every one of his fingers and his fighting spirit has been sucked clean out of him.  Maybe most of him has been sucked out.  Maybe there was nothing left of the real Malcolm Tucker to remove anymore.  Malcolm feels weak and depleted.  Malcolm feels that he has spent his life in pursuit of power, considering only the getting of it, the keeping of it, and now he has lost his own.  Malcolm wants to curl up in a ball and let himself rest for the first time in more than a decade, but he’s worried that years of politics will mean he’s incapable of something so... normal. 

“I’m not sure I can do this, Nic’la.”  The words make her jump.  He is too soft, too broken.  He is unsettling like this, and Nicola doesn’t know how to handle Malcolm Tucker when he’s being earnest; he so rarely has been with her over the past five years. 

“It’s just pasta, Malcolm.  It’s not going to kill you.  _Believe_ me, if I wanted to kill you I’d do it with my bare fucking hands right now.”

“I don’t mean the fucking pasta you daft giblet, and by the way, I’d like to see you fucking try.  You’d probably end up attacking yer own reflection.”

Nicola drops a fistful of linguine into the pot of boiling water and flicks her eyes over her shoulder, taking in the fatigue in his face.  The last time she remembers seeing him quite like this is when Steve Fleming first came back to Tom’s office, and that concerns her.  Nicola had watched him inches from total self destruction, had borne the emotional brunt of his sacking.  Nicola would never voice it in these terms, but her life and Malcolm’s have in many ways revolved around one another’s for the past two years, and seeing him like this, even though she utterly fucking despises him right now, is complicated for her.  Complicated in much the same way it was complicated when he talked her into turning down her job at Yale.  On one hand, Nicola wants to find the crashing demise of Señor Malcolm Tucker something worthy of celebration.  On the other, she has worked so closely with this man that sometimes she forgets he is a political assassin - let alone _her own_ political assassin.  That second hand is the one that makes her feel badly for him, the one that brought her to his door.  Those two hands are currently engaged in an arm wrestle between throwing scalding water on him to have done with it, and trying to find something to make the pasta less drab. 

“What then?”  She asks, crossing back to the pantry in search of herbs or tomato paste. 

“I can’t fucking be normal again, Nic’la.  Christ, I barely survived being out of the loop fer two days when that cunting little ferret Fleming came back.” 

Nicola considers him evenly, fingers closed around a shaker of parmesan cheese she's uncovered in the pantry. 

“Malcolm...”  Her tone is soft, gentle.  Malcolm wonders what he’s done to earn it after all she’s been put through for the last few weeks.  “Look, maybe we should worry about trying to keep you out of gaol before we start talking about how you’ll cope without an official BlackBerry?” 

“Oh, I’m fucking going to gaol, darlin’.  Even my three-grand-an-hour wanker of a lawyer isn’t changing that turd shaped factoid.”

“Yes, that’s what I’d assumed, actually.”

“Aren’t you even goin’ t’ ask if I did it?” 

“No.  No, I’m not.”  Her gaze is trained fixedly on his condiments now.  “Because if you did it then I actually will fucking kill you and if you didn’t then I’ll have such a breakdown over the injustice of the legal system that I won’t be able to cope.  And if you did I don’t fucking want to be here and for some reason I actually _do_ want to be here, so let’s just leave it, okay?  And just _by the way_ part of me doesn’t care either way because my fucking _god_ , Malcolm, the kind of karma you must have been accumulating over the last seventeen years was bound to catch up with you at some point so maybe you just have to take this.  This parmesan is like fucking sand.” 

Nicola tips her hand and lets the solid little grains of now very dry cheese tumble to the floor, brushing her fingers over her palm to rid it of the last few granules. 

Malcolm studies the former Leader of the Opposition silently, processing her comments.  A few days ago she was the alternate Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  A few weeks before that, he was still trying to work out how to get her there.  Professionally Malcolm feels no guilt at affecting her destruction.  Personally something clenches in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about what life would have been like had she actually managed to get there - if _he_ had actually managed to get her there.  Of course it’s nonsense to think that she ever could have led the fucking nation.  Jesus, Malcolm’s never even seen her lead a body of staff for fuck’s sake, but the part of him that has a tiny glimmer of personal regard for her, the part of him that doesn’t hate having her here in his kitchen to make sure he doesn’t drop dead from hunger, that part likes to think she would have stepped up to the job.  And if there is even the vaguest possiblity she may have managed to step up to the job, then he has robbed her of something.

While he’s considering all this, Nicola’s hand closes around a can of tomatoes.  “Thank fuck,” the brunette mumbles almost inaudibly.  In her younger days she was well adept at tossing pasta together from basically nothing on those rare occasions when there was a cock up booking a babysitter or nanny and she would have to rush home to feed the children, but there was no promise whatsoever in buttered linguine.  Malcolm doesn’t even seem to possess a lemon that isn’t more mould than skin at this point. 

Thankfully, Malcolm’s passion for curry means he has a well stocked spice rack, so Nicola is able to locate enough fillers to make what is now effectively going to be linguine tossed in butter with lightly sautéed tomatoes at least vaguely interesting in flavour. 

Malcolm watches as she stirs an assortment of herbs and spices through the makeshift sauce she’s creating.  He’s surprised that she has any sense of complementary flavours; she has always seemed to be someone with no instinct or predilection for cooking whatsoever.  It’s not like he’s tasted it yet, of course.  It may well be as much of a fiasco as everything else Nicola Murray turns her hand to.  In fact, he’s not sure why he gave her the benefit of the doubt in the first place.  It’s something he’s found himself doing over and over again over the past few years, and it never ends with him pleasantly surprised. 

“Could you get me some bowls, or would that be too much to ask?”  Her tone is dripping with disdain.  She is still grappling with how much of her anger she’s allowed to work through tonight versus how much time she should spend being supportive.  She is worried for him, despite her best efforts not to be, but her fury refuses to be totally dismissed.  It’s an odd mix of emotions for Nicola.  She is used to being angry at the males in her life, used to being disappointed by them, but somehow this has hit her harder than anything before.  Harder than the metric fuck-ton of lies James has dumped on her over the years, and that’s something that concerns her deeply.  What concerns her more is that she’s reasonably convinced that the underlying reason for it is the simple fact of trust.  Regardless of a long and complicated professional history, Nicola has always trusted Malcolm.  She doesn’t always agree with him, can’t always justify him, but she trusts him. Having him betray her so thoroughly and easily has been utterly devastating. 

His eyes bore into her back, but whether she can feel them or not he is unsure.  She fishes a teaspoon from the drawer to her right, and he watches her tongue flit out to catch a drop of sauce before it falls to the bench.  Maybe it’s because he’s overtired (more so than usual), and he’s probably going to gaol, and his entire life is basically fucked - maybe it’s because all the people in the wider world, or just the people in _his_ wider world have totally abandoned him, but for some reason, Malcolm can’t help thinking that Nicola Murray is not a totally unwelcome presence in his kitchen.  In fact, he’s finding Nicola’s invasion quite comforting.  But, god, she pisses him off.  How fucking dare she barge in here and fucking feed him like he’s an infant?  And why is his treacherous brain reminding him of useless facts about how she felt on top of him that night at Conference, how her tongue was wicked even when she was trolleyed.  It’s been years since Luce left and it’s been almost that long since he really stopped to care, but every now and then that night at Conference still pops into his head.  Every now and then he remembers how long it’s been since he’s had a mojito.  Every now and then he remembers snogging her behind The Hog with rain misting over them in the not too distant past.  Something within Malcolm Tucker seems to insist on reminding him of useless facts about times he has crossed professional lines with Nicola Murray, and tonight is no different.

Silently Malcolm ghosts up behind her, reaching for the bowls in the cupboard above her head and to the right.  While he does so, his left hand trails down her waist and over the arse has so admired all these years.  Nicola tenses under his hand and spins in his grasp.  Malcolm manages to set the bowls down to his right before Nicola knocks them from his hand with her sudden movement. 

Nicola’s eyes, well known to be malleable in colour, are currently blazing green; indignant, confused.  Malcolm does not smile as he runs his hand down her leg and attempts to hook her knee around his hips, trapping her against the counter and pressing himself against her.  Before Nicola can quite work out what’s happening, Malcolm is bending his head and dropping his lips to hers.  He is still not smiling; there is not the levity of the first occasion nor the blissful excuse of her being intoxicated of the last.  The first time they kiss when they are both sober, each wishes they’d had rather a lot to drink. 

Nicola’s brain is normally a swirling mess of fire trucks trying to get around a traffic jam, but right now there are police cars and ambulances thrown into the mix, too.  Half of her is screaming that this is Malcolm Fucking Tucker, the man who has just completely fucked over her career and basically her life, while the other half is caught in a vicious loop of _oh-god-hands-mouth-fingers-Malcolm-oh-god-hands-mouth-fingers-Malcolm._ She is seething with rage at everything about him, at the mere fact of his existence.  She has exhausted herself with hating him, which is perhaps the only reason she found it within herself to come here tonight.  She is still trying and failing to process the events of the last eight days, and having Malcolm Tucker’s tongue invading her mouth is really not helping her in this endeavour. 

Since that first night he kissed her all those years ago Malcolm has pondered in his rare idle moments what she might taste like when she hasn’t spent the night ingesting rum or cheap white wine like it’s oxygen.  Even though this is definitely not the circumstances he expected to surround such a discovery, Malcolm is comforted to find that she tastes exactly how he’s always imagined she would.  She tastes like an omnishambolic frump he finds inexplicably endearing.  She tastes exactly as she should, and for no reason Malcolm is glad she does; it seems fitting that at least something in the last fortnight has been at least vaguely predictable.  Malcolm’s free hand caresses her cheek, her hair which he has so often professed a fondness for.  His eyes slip open again, attempting to take in her face at such close range.  Her name falls from his lips, a gentle “Nic’la” laced with a kind of exhausted longing, and the sound of it finally breaks Nicola’s cycle of _Get Malcolm The Fuck Off You_ versus _Oh Fucking God, Malcolm, Yes_.  Her hands fall from his face (and oh god, when did she put her hands on his face?) and push him from her by his hips.  Nicola wishes she had the ability to summon some kind of coherent words, but she does not.  She is too busy trying to decide why her heart is pounding and the taste in her mouth is so intoxicating.  She breaks into a run, taking up her coat on the way out.  The last evidence of her presence is the sound of the door slamming in her wake.  Almost instantly Malcolm misses the warmth of her body against his, the feel of her leg under his fingers, but he can’t say he’s really surprised.  After all, this is not the first time Nicola Murray has run wordlessly from him at a significant moment. 

 

Calmly, Malcolm turns off the stove, drains the pasta, and dumps it unceremoniously in a bowl.  There’s no point in letting it go to waste now and he is rarely a man to turn down a free meal.  For the first time since his testimony at the Inquiry, Malcolm Tucker’s head is not filled with the spectacular shards of his once brilliant career; it is filled with every tiny detail of Nicola Murray he has absorbed this night.  Malcolm muses over the temperature of her body and the texture of her hair, the smell of her skin and the taste of her mouth while he picks idly at the pasta she’s made.  In accordance with his earlier contention, she does have a sense of complementary flavours, and for no reason this makes the ghost of a smile touch his lips.  

Malcolm will spend years trying to replicate this pasta.  He can never quite get the balance between oregano, turmeric, and chilli right, but he is content to undertake his culinary experiments in the hope of recreation.  Years later, when he first pushes a spoonful under Nicola’s nose and asks for her opinion on the accuracy of his recipe, he is rudely informed that she has “no fucking idea, because you decided to fucking kiss me.  I only had a teaspoon of it.” 

Even if the memory of the pasta becomes hazy and imprecise as time strides past him while juggling two cosmic mobile phones, Malcolm can always rely on Nicola Murray’s mouth tasting of her own special brand of omnishambles.  He will forever take comfort in this fact.


	4. "A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Nicola kisses Malcolm while she is sober she realises that, actually, she would quite like to kiss him on a regular basis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is James Callaghan's.

Tonight exists before the long intervening period in which Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray kiss each other in secret, but after the prevailing episode in which they have no contact at all.  Somewhere between these two points, the two of them develop the kind of companionable acquaintance they were always dimly aware they could have but were both too busy trying to avoid their own destruction and perhaps affect the other's to achieve. 

It’s easy.  Easier than it should have been.  Easier than either is comfortable with it being.  They do simple things together now that he’s out of gaol.  They share meals and have very serious and competitive Scrabble and chess wars.  Every now and then Malcolm comes to the football with her because she can’t come at the thought of going alone with the boys but also refuses to let James be the only one who has any fun with them.  This is one of the few things they have done in public; generally they tend towards simplicity, privacy.  They attempt to build their relationship as it could have been from the start: one based on a similar sense of humour and an ability to push each other’s buttons; for the most part it goes quite smoothly.  They learn not to leap to verbal warfare at the first sign of tension, and once they’ve negotiated this boundary everything becomes slightly less shouty and combative.  Things are, of course, still relatively shouty and combative, they are still Nicola and Malcolm after all, but things take on a more even keel, and this makes civilian friendship somewhat easier.

Tonight they have convened their meeting at Nicola’s house, and even though she had been intending to cook, Malcolm had quickly shooed her out of the kitchen when she’d almost mistaken cinnamon sugar for ground cardamom.  While Malcolm once acknowledged that she has some instinct for complementary flavours, all cooking abilities evade her when she has spent the week locked in a manifesto review committee and is almost dead with boredom.   Normally Nicola would have hovered while he cooked, freshening drinks and doing odd jobs like selecting spices.  Tonight Malcolm has banished her from her own kitchen on firm instructions that she needs to put on some clothes that aren't so tight she can’t breathe.  After a grumbled rebuttal that she absolutely _could_ breathe in her neat charcoal dress she had obeyed him, silently padding off to her bedroom to change.

Tonight is entirely different to the first time she cooked him dinner, just after the fallout from the Goolding Inquiry.  Now there is a casual ease between them in which Nicola takes a substantial amount of comfort. 

When she returns to the kitchen she slides onto the counter and takes up the glass of wine she abandoned earlier.  Instead of donning pyjama bottoms as he’d expected, she’s pulled on a soft skirt and a flowy aubergine cardigan, which she tucks around herself absently.  Her legs are sheathed in tights, and the dark black fabric is a stark contrast against her cream marble bench.  Malcolm is in one of his amusingly snuggly fleeces and a pair of trousers, and Nicola can’t help wondering whether he’s hot, standing over the stove.  One day when she settles on a bench beside him while he cooks he will reach over and touch her knee affectionately; today he simply sweeps his eyes over her stocking clad legs and notes the way she leans her head back against the cupboard, lets her mouth hang slightly agape and looks as if she may well fall asleep right there on the bench. 

“So, tell me about your Party Approved Wankfest.”  Malcolm instructs her.

“Hmm?  Oh it was...” she searches for a word.  “Fucking exhausting, actually.  I’m genuinely concerned that the new team might be suffering from some kind of mental infirmity.  And Ollie sat there sulking, watching Henry do all these ‘how to better communicate’ exercises that I swear must have somehow come from Stewart Pearson.  No one else at this level is quite so touchy-feely without being a total sociopath like Flemming.”  Malcolm snorts a laugh, glancing between her and the meal he’s preparing. 

“How’s Miller copin’?”

“Now that Chris is leader?  Oh god, terribly.  I mean, I have four children who, let’s face it, weren’t fantastically well behaved in their formative years - ”

“Or so you’ve been told.”  Malcolm snipes quietly, earning a gentle kick from the brunette on the bench. 

“And I’ve never seen such a sustained passive aggressive tantrum in my life.”

“Oh, Danny Boy...”  The Scot sighs.  He’s never liked Dan Miller as far as he could throw him, even if he’s always recognised that the unctuous little shit is exactly what a Communications Director could want in a Leader.  Someone with no background but for politics, no past, no awkward nights in strip clubs.  Dan is and always has been totally Teflon coated; while Malcolm recognises this about him, he has never been able to find any personal regard for the brown nosing little arse-clown. 

“How do you find him?”

“Chris?  Um, good actually.”  Nicola combs her hair with her fingers while she says it and frowns thoughtfully.  She sips at her vintage red wine before elaborating.  “I mean, look.  He’s not as strong on policy as Tom, but I think he’s less isolating in terms of personality than Dan, so you’ve sort of got the best of both worlds in some ways.  And I mean he’s not... rubbish at policy.  People like him.  When we’ve been at events he gets approached with this kind of genuine enthusiasm, like people want to know him as a person rather than get a photo with some prick who might run the country eventually.”

Malcolm nods, familiar with such sentiments from the public.  His issue with Nicola was always that the public were happy to get to know her as a person, but terrified of the idea of her running the country.  He casts a glance up to Nicola’s face and catches a glimmer of something that would have concerned him in their professional relationship, but as a friend only mildly amuses him. 

Digging a bony elbow into her knee Malcolm mumbles “Out with it, Nic’la.”

“What?”  At once she is all wide-eyed innocence, and Malcolm quite likes her like this: easy and casual and just a little combative.  He likes having her in reach as well, even though he would never articulate this, and would only in very specific circumstances actually reach for her.

“You’ve got that ‘gunning fer Deputy’ glimmer in your eye.”

Nicola folds one arm over her chest and raises her wine glass to her lips with the other.  “Would that be so bad?  I mean, before you start, I’ve learnt a lot since... everything.”

Malcolm nods.  He doesn’t want to get into this with her now.  He wants to gossip about the failures of his former co-workers and toast her current successes, even if they are largely because the Secretary of State for Justice is as useful as woollen underwear on John Barrowman.  He does not want to war-game her career as if he is still one of her advisers, and in truth, this is the last thing Nicola wants to spend tonight discussing.  Suddenly the air between them becomes charged and Nicola changes tack.  “Not until after the election and well into the next term, anyway.  Long term goal.”  She thinks about touching his leg with her foot gently, something to alleviate the unwelcome modicum of awkwardness that’s come between them.  She refrains, thinking it too intimate for people in their situation, people with their history. 

 

Feeling released from that particular thread of conversation Malcolm asks “Are yeh still eyein’ off the Foreign Office?”

Nicola shifts her gaze and focuses on a point on the wall opposite her.  “Actually, Justice has made me realise that...  I mean, Foreign Secretary is one of the glamorous jobs, isn’t it?  You get to get all over the world - ”

“Not great for My Little Claustrophobe over here.”

Were Nicola less familiar with Malcolm’s propensity to nickname her after popular culture, particularly children’s programmes, she would have taken his statement to indicate a kind of intimate possession.  Nicola will not voice it at any point, but she would not actually object to this. 

“And obviously the idea of jetting around and having bilateral meetings with world leaders is appealing, but...  You’re going to laugh when I say this, but I actually miss - ”

“For the love of fuck, don’t say DoSAC.” 

“Well, not _actually_ DoSAC, but, yknow.  Being able to do things that had some kind of practical outcome for the average person.  I mean no one gives a shit if we have a good relationship with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, do they, really?  Not until something goes wrong, anyway.” 

The glance Malcolm shoots at her is contemplative; he is still a little surprised when she says anything insightful about politics or her perceptions of her place in it.  He is still surprised at how much she wants to make a difference. 

“So what, then?”  He asks, turning off the various appliances he’s used to finish the meal.  Nicola is sitting on his right hand side blocking a power point, and while he reaches past her for it he tips his right hand so it is parallel to her body, his thumb towards the bench, and caresses her hip on his way past.  Nicola takes this as the sign to dismount the bench it is, but remains put, trying not to focus on the fact that she likes when he touches her; part of her always has.  Once his hand is back on a pair of tongs she slides off the bench and begins gathering plates and cutlery.  Malcolm takes a moment to study the curves of her arse as she bends to retrieve wanky cream Ecology linen textured plates which he can’t stand.  There’s nothing actually wrong with them, he’d just felt like picking a fight with her when he first saw them and can’t go back on his disdain now.  Her arse, on the other hand, is something he’s consistently approved of for the duration of their acquaintance, even when he has utterly despised everything else about her. 

“I’m not sure.  Chris has left things reasonably open to me, if we win.”  She says, picking up a conversation he’d almost totally forgotten while pondering the brunette’s anatomy. 

“You can’t go back to DoSAC.  You know that, righ’?” 

“Of course I fucking know that, Malcolm.  I’m not a brain damaged parakeet.”  Malcolm’s quirked eyebrow is a clear articulation that he thinks she may well be, and she seriously considers hitting him for his insinuation.  “But you know, in hindsight I do miss it there a bit.  I mean, it’ll always be my first Department, won’t it?  I feel like I’m going to end up popping in for visits when I’m old and decrepit.” 

“Well phone ahead, darlin’, because I don’t think the Tories’ll like yeh just bargin’ in next week.”

“I was thinking Health actually.”  She replies.  The fact that she has learnt to simply ignore his barbs tells him a great deal about the state of their friendship, and it scares him.  She should not be this comfortable with him.  He should not want her to be.  

“Health Secretary?”  He repeats, studying her face carefully.  Malcolm actually finds, when he scrolls through the many reasons this shouldn’t work that, actually, it does.  She can exercise her inclinations for social justice in a portfolio that has a real budget dedicated to it, that is well staffed with a wide range of experts to consult.  This isn’t something she’d be totally on her own in doing.  She might even have a chance of being good.  He doesn’t remember reading an interview with her where she didn’t profess her passionate love for the NHS, nor can he recall a caucus or later Cabinet meeting where she did not vociferously oppose any spending cuts on health, or changes she felt would be detrimental.  No, this is a very different proposition indeed to tossing her into a Department that no one even really understands.  This is something that perhaps even Nicola Murray can manage to not fuck up.  Or possibly fuck up so badly that there would be a new pandemic as a result of her stewardship, but for no good reason Malcolm is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

 

He speaks with that soft and genuine tone which is so rare but so pleasant when it pops its head up.  “I think that’s a really nice fit, actually.”  Malcolm replies, and some part of Nicola feels better for his support.  Not in a Maybe-The-Communications-Director-Won’t-Kill-Me-Now sense, but in a Nicola-Murray-Is-Glad-Of-Malcolm-Tucker’s-Support sense.  This is possibly even more worrisome. 

 

They settle into their meals and fall into an easy conversation, and no one observing the scene would believe that for a time, each managed to affect the other’s downfall. 

 When the pair is sitting and chatting idly in Nicola’s lounge room post-meal, Malcolm’s phone begins buzzing insistently.  Their eyes travel to the little device and Malcolm waves his hand dismissively; this miniscule gesture says everything that can be said about the shift in Malcolm’s priorities, his attitude.  His eyes don’t even drop from her when it begins buzzing a second time, and again, Nicola is glad to see his ability to separate from work.  The third call tells Malcolm something is genuinely wrong.  “Fellate the fucking pharaoh, can no one manage their own shittin’ problems?  Sorry.” 

“No, it’s fine.  Take it.  Fix whatever fiasco there is at the firm.”  Nicola says, shaking out her hair and standing.  She feels slightly less close to death after eating, and because of this decides to do the dishes while she has the energy. 

“It’s a fuckin’ Friday night, William.  Someone had better be haemorrhaging on live television.”  A light smile touches Nicola’s lips.  A complaint about working on a Friday night from a man who basically hadn’t had a day off for a decade until he was fired.  Wonders will clearly never cease.

 

 

Nicola finds there is something oddly soothing about the occasional Scottish accented expletive floating into the kitchen while she does the dishes, and instantly wishes this thought had never occurred to her.  His swearing subsides before she finishes the washing up, and she wonders if he is typing something on his BlackBerry or if he is planning to join her at some point, hover around and niggle at her as she does the dishes.  He does not join her at any point, though, and Nicola refuses to acknowledge that she would rather like him to.  When she pads back into the lounge room she finds the Scot asleep on her couch, his hand clutching his BlackBerry to his chest.  A fond smile touches the corner of Nicola’s lips and she prizes the device from his fingers as gently as she can.  She flicks its vibrate setting off so it doesn’t disturb him overnight, and retrieves a throw rug to tuck around him.  She gets half way through covering him when the pull of his fleece becomes irresistible.  It is exactly as soft and snuggly as it has always looked, and Nicola, after a week trapped in a godforsaken retreat with her Parliamentary colleagues, is unable to resist the simple notion of sleeping against another living being.  Reaching over to flick off the standing lamp Nicola slides beneath the throw rug and curls her body against Malcolm’s, smiling to herself at the familiar smell of him.  In a moment marked by the kind of privacy one assumes one has when the other party is deeply asleep, Nicola presses a gentle kiss to his cheek; she does so in such a way that her mouth covers half of his.  When her tongue flicks over her lips as she settles her head back on his shoulder she finds beneath the hints of dinner and reasonably nice merlot, there is something uniquely Malcolm Tucker on her lips.  She has not tasted it since he shoved her against his joinery and she proceeded to bolt from his house. 

 

The first time Nicola kisses Malcolm while she is sober she realises that, not only has she missed the taste of Malcolm Tucker on her lips, but, actually, she would quite like to kiss him on a regular basis. 


	5. "My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time they kiss in public, it is Nicola’s Birthday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, lovely people. I actually have had a bit of trouble letting this story go, but I suppose it's better that I send it off into the universe than sit here while I pretend it isn't finished. 
> 
> The chapter title is Boris Johnson's. The characters are Armando's, and I for one am very grateful to him for inventing them in all their brilliance. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter. This chapter is quite a long way in the future, but even so I hope they're satisfactorily in character. Thank you to everyone who's read this story, especially those who've reviewed and left kudos. I genuinely appreciate it. 
> 
> Now I'll let you jolly on with the show.

The first time they kiss in public, it is Nicola’s Birthday.  Long after the dust of the Goolding fiasco has settled and Malcolm is out of gaol, the Scot takes it upon himself to help organise Nicola's office Birthday do.  It’s nothing exceptional, just a cake and a bottle of champagne with her staff (a new bunch who actually have some policy credentials and a sense of loyalty).  While a loyal staff body once would have made Malcolm’s job immeasurably more difficult, now, as someone observing from the sidelines from the perspective of _person-who-loves-Nicola-Murray_ , this suits him far better.  On top of that, if any of them ever made the mistake of crossing her, Malcolm would be storming the building with a hurricane of expletives faster than a Japanese bullet train.  While he would never tell Nicola this, he has the irritating suspicion that she knows it anyway. 

 

Malcolm spends far too long on the phone to her diary secretary trying to establish when she’s free between appointments that day, and eventually he has forty minutes carved out between a meeting at NHS head office and a BBC interview that evening.  Much to everyone’s surprise, Malcolm is quite particular about the running of the event, and not only in a psychotic micromanager sense, in an ‘I genuinely care how this goes’ sense.  And he does care.  Malcolm Tucker, despite his best efforts has come to care deeply about these kinds of trivial, nonsensical events.  His own Birthday used to be spent working without the faintest idea of celebrating.  The rare occasions when the event was actually acknowledged, Malcolm had always been the least willing participant in the festivities, but after years of four miniature Murrays plus the Queen of All Birthday Celebrations herself, Malcolm has come to respect that they are important, at the very least to his other half.  A part of him has even begun to grudgingly enjoy them.

 

So now, the man who spent his fiftieth Birthday listening to Nicola doing a radio interview and eating cunt cake is faffing about with the placement of an elaborate purple creation on his partner’s desk.  He is critically considering its positioning as if the future of the United Kingdom’s health system depends on how aesthetically pleasing his cake placement is rather than how astute the policy decisions taken by his Secretary of State for Health partner, her Department, and her horde of advisers are.

After deciding that, yes, in the centre is fine, just as Malcolm first suspected, Nicola sweeps into Richmond House, relaying the finer points of one of the Departmental Secretaries regaling in vivid detail how she was recently vomited on while at a hospital photo shoot, with a full colour description, while Nicola herself had tried to keep from retching at the thought and somehow keep the meeting in hand.  Malcolm smirks to himself as he listens to her breezing down the hall, making a beeline for her office, doubtless so she can kick her shoes off and swap into her trainers.  He is sitting in her chair with a light smile playing about his lips, trying very hard not to find her more endearing than usual when she is absently thrusting coats at staff, and raging about how “If I’d wanted to spend my life being vomited on I would’ve been a fucking doctor.  Or I would have taken some fucking time off to raise my children and let them vomit on me.  I’m the sodding Health Secretary for fu- ”

 

Her eyes fall on Malcolm first, smirking contentedly in her chair with that quietly victorious sparkle in his eye.  That little glimmer used to terrify her, used to signify he was going to outwit and ruin her all at once; now it usually just turns her on. 

“Hello!  I didn’t know you were - did we have dinner planned or something?”  She is frowning deeply, and Malcolm cannot contain his amusement at the fact that she still hasn’t noticed the lavish lavender coloured cake sitting proudly in the middle of her desk.

“No.”

“Oh.  So you just decided to surprise me at work?”  Her tone is dubious, like she thinks he is planning to do something horrible, like she’s worried he’s going to break bad news.  As amusing as it is, Malcolm is also a little worried about how well she’s going to survive her interview if she can’t even deduce that it’s her Birthday. 

“Thought I’d pay tribute to the reigning Queen of the NHS.”

Nicola’s face clouds with a low degree of irritation now.  “Alright, what’s going on?  Gillian?  Do you have any idea why my deranged other half is - ”

“Wishin’ yeh a Happy Birthday?”  Malcolm smirks, dropping is gaze to the cake and watching Nicola’s face spiral through irritation, confusion and finally gratitude before she glances back up at him.

Malcolm lifts a hand and waves in a cohort of Nicola’s staff.  Gillian, Mitchell, Chris and Cathy (her main advisers and also her favourites) enter with some degree of trepidation.  They have all come into contact with Malcolm at various points in their lives or careers, but this iteration of Malcolm is still foreign and terrifying to them.  Gillian is carrying a handful of champagne glasses while Mitch is fumbling to get the foil off the top of the bottle.  Malcolm really would like to tell him to hand it the fuck over and let a real man deal with the alcohol, but he refrains for the sake of civility, and in the end Cathy wrenches it from his hand and does the honours herself.  Malcolm respects a woman who knows her way around a bottle of champagne. 

Liz, her Departmental Press Officer (so much better than Terri and Robyn that Nicola almost wept when they first met) is still on the phone, and holds up her hand and shrugs at her boss apologetically.  Andy, her Departmental Liaison is passing notes with Liz and frantically trying to hear the full conversation by pressing his ear to the other side of the phone.  He is arguably the only one of Nicola’s staff prone to real stress, and this, given Nicola’s own propensity for panic, is a very good thing.  One staffer who goes to pieces under pressure, that she can handle.  A whole office full and she is no longer capable of functioning herself.

“Happy Birthday, Nicola.”  Gilly says after setting the glasses carefully on the desk, righting herself and embracing her boss tenderly.  Malcolm leaves the staff to fuss over her, happy to observe the situation.  Her advisers have bought her an expensive engraved pen which reads ‘HRH Nicola Murray, Queen of the NHS’, and the delight on her face is infectious.  Malcolm ponders the importance of staff selection; beyond being competent, they share a level of tactility, of intimacy that Nicola seeks in friendships and obviously appreciates in her staff.  Cathy touches her boss' hair, Nicola rubs Chris' shoulder absently.  It's almost too much for the Scot to bear, and makes him wonder whether she's been right all along about his desire for conflict in politics.  Either way, this office seems far too functional for Malcolm’s taste, and it’s concerning him.  

 

Once they’re done fawning and are contentedly sipping champagne, Malcolm rises from his partner’s chair and crosses around her desk.

“Oh my god, what am I like?  I forgot my own Birthday.”  She mumbles.  “I love my Birthday.”

The Scot laughs through his nose.  “I know, pet.” 

“No, I mean I actually forgot my own - ”

“Yeah, but I didn’t.”

“I’ve finally trained you to do something that benefits me.”  She teases prodding him in the chest before lightly fingering his red silk tie. 

“Shut up and make a wish.”  Malcolm instructs, pointing her to the cake, which is now blazing with candles that Cathy has been patiently lighting.

Liz makes it into the office just in time to stay Nicola extinguishing her candles with Andy trotting closely at her heels. 

“Shagging.”  Malcolm mumbles into Nicola’s ear upon observing the pair, and the look she shoots him would dehydrate a cactus. 

“Sorry, Nicola!”  Liz says breathlessly, crushing the brunette in her arms and almost knocking her own glasses off in the process. 

“That’s fine, darling.  Someone needs to be working in here, don’t they?  Malcolm don’t say a word or I will hurt you.”  The Scot holds up his hands innocently.  Andy pecks Nicola’s cheek, trying to avoid Liz, whose arm is still draped casually around Nicola’s waist.  The warmth in the office is foreign to Malcolm.  Political staffers are never this selflessly attached to their Ministers, are they?  Or was that just part of the culture under his reign as Director of Communications?  He doesn’t much like the thought that he was a large part of the reason so many of the Ministers had such hostile, suspicious relationships with their staff.  Surely that can’t be all down to him, can it?  He wants to ask her about it one day, but he is afraid of the answer she will give. 

 

“This is very sweet everyone.  I’m probably getting a bit old for all the fanfare, but - ”

“You’re getting a bit old for a lot of things, but you still muddle through them.”  Malcolm observes.  Were they not in public he would have settled his hand firmly on her arse.  Were they not in public she probably would have elbowed him in the solar plexus. 

“But I appreciate it, is what I was going to say.  Now I should probably” a gesture to the cake “before we end up with wax everywhere.”  She tucks her hair back and blows out her candles, trying to keep the fact that she is so utterly humbled by the affection in the room from showing on her face.  After a long time in politics, Nicola had resigned herself to never having truly loyal staff, yet in the period since losing government, winning back government and being returned to Cabinet, Nicola has stumbled upon a glorious group of staff.  She still struggles to believe it’s real quite often.

 

“Also, while we’re all here, I’d just like to say you are far and away the best staff I’ve ever had, and I appreciate you all so much.  I love working with you.”

“Just fer the rec’rd, though, all her other staff have been _truly_ shit.  It’s not a massive complement.”

“Malcolm!”  She snaps.  “Could you please shut the fuck up and let me say something nice to my staff?  I know it’s a foreign concept to you but I try to be an actual person.  Okay?  Good.  Thank you.”  At no point in this speech does she give him the chance to respond.  Nicola hesitates for a moment trying to gather her thoughts.  “...  That was actually all I had.  Slightly less positive with the partner related swearing in the middle.  So, anyway, thank you all!”  She is hugged again by her staff, this time in more of a dog-pile-on-Nicola manner than before, then delegates the cutting of the cake to someone else and turns into Malcolm’s arms.

“Happy Birthday, darlin’.”  He mumbles, brushing long, competent fingers over her cheek and through her hair.

“Thank you.”  The Scot shrugs, and she tangles her fingers with his.  “No really, thank you.  I know you’re a colossal shit, but I really appreciate this.”

“Yeah, well, if I’m not nice to yeh at least once a year you might leave, mightn’t yeh?”

“You’re quite passable quite often, really.”  Nicola counters, her smirk only two shades away from taunting.  Malcolm’s voice drops into its most dangerous tone.  “Are you tryin’ to ruin my fucking reputation?”

The brunette’s eyes sparkle wickedly as she mumbles “I absolutely am” before leaning up and kissing him lingeringly.  One of her staff (Chris probably; it’s always Chris) wolf whistles at the pair, and Malcolm calmly flips the younger man off.  His arm then curls back around Nicola and pulls her body tightly against his.  They are a mash of expensive suiting and warm bodies that are inaccessible through said suiting.  Nicola is very much looking forward to chasing his black Hugo Boss suit down his arms once she gets him home tonight.

Despite the cold harshness of the words that usually spill from it, Malcolm’s mouth is inviting and warm.  When not forming words, Malcolm’s mouth is pleasing and considerate.  However, while his tongue is teasing hers, Nicola detects an entirely foreign flavour and a frown pulls across her face.

“Have you been eating my fucking cake?”  She demands, pulling back from him too fast for his liking. 

“What are you talking about, woman?”

“You taste like icing.  You taste, to be specific, like French vanilla icing with honey in it.”

“Hallucinating yer favourite icing flavour is a sign of brain tumour, pet.  You migh’ want to get that checked out.  Presents more in people of a certain age, too, I’d expect.”

Nicola casts her eyes towards the cake again and this time notices a heart in the surface that looks suspiciously like it’s been drawn by someone’s finger. 

“You’re fucking hopeless.”  Nicola comments, thumping him in the chest.  Even though she’s hit him hard, no one could deny that the action was affectionate.  Or perhaps more accurately that she still feels affection towards him even when physically abusing him.

“Was one of you lot recordin’ that?  Because I think the Daily Mail might be interested in that.  Headline material, righ’ there; ‘Senior Cabinet Minister Assaults Former Adviser’.”

“Oh fuck off, Malcolm.”  Nicola smiles, feeling his hand brushing over her waistline as she turns to take the proffered piece of cake. 

“Shit, should I be eating this?”  Nicola asks around a mouthful of cake.  An almost imperceptible noise of sheer bliss had escaped the back of her throat when the cake had first touched her tongue, and Malcolm’s only means of concealing his smile had been to fold his arms over his chest and inspect the tips of his shoes.  There is no possible way anyone is wrestling that cake off her short of causing her some kind of grievous bodily injury.  Beyond that, Malcolm doesn’t have the heart to rob her of what seems to be the highlight of her day, and it seems no member of her staff does either. 

“I mean, this is probably going to make me claggy, isn’t it?  What if I split my dress on live television?  I mean it’s the fucking BBC, no one will be watching anyway, will they?” 

“We have this wonderful invention called ‘The Internet’, Nic’la.  Fuck, you in a burstin’ dress would have Ben Swain hate-wanking until his hands were bloodied fucking stumps.  Just stumps.”  Malcolm drawls, a sinful sparkle in his blue eyes.  Nicola tips her head and glares at her partner.  “Just eat yer fucking cake.”  The brunette doesn’t need to be told twice. 

While Malcolm is Antoinette-esq in his contention that everyone must let her eat her cake, when Chris leans over with a glass of champagne however, the Scot is quick to intercept.  “Hey, Mister Ghost of Birthdays Pissed, what in the name of the sadistic fucking televisual gods d’you think you’re doing?”  The tips of Malcolm’s fingers are pressed into Chris’ chest, but his tone remains jocular.  It’s one of the tones that used to unsettle Ollie the most back in the beginning. 

“Um... giving my boss a glass of champagne?”  Chris is mildly unsettled, but only mildly so.  This is one of the main problems with Nicola’s staff having such a clear understanding that he holds no real power over them.  Malcolm loathes it. 

“Chris, as you’re aware I live with this lunatic you call a Minister - ”

“Malcolm!”  She barks, but her heart isn’t really in it. 

“- But I have no hesitation in telling you that I’ve seen her do interviews sober...”

“Right.  Right.”

“Excuse me, Christian, I’d hate for you to forget who hired you.”

“What, y’mean Gilly?”

Nicola wants to rail against him, but she is in the unfortunate position of basically having a great deal of respect and affection for all her staff.  “Oh... fuck off.  And just for the record, Malcolm, I can do an interview after having a glass of champagne.” 

Malcolm’s gaze becomes pointed.  “Earlobes.” 

“Shit.  Shit, right, take it away.” 

Covertly Malcolm touches a kiss to the back of her head as he scoots around her to retrieve his own glass, muttering “I made sure it was a nice one, too.”  Nicola cannot summon the will to be angry with him for taunting her so even on her Birthday.  What very few people in the world know or realise is that Malcolm Tucker is actually quite an affectionate man with the select few people he’s decided he likes.  He’s actually having quite a hard time keeping from spending far too much time touching her right now.  His reputation can’t really take the further hit, though.  Imagine having the Demon Lord of Westminster spending the entire afternoon with his arms curled casually around the former Leader he destroyed; he would be reduced to the proverbial kitten in everyone’s minds before he could issue a verbal enema or any sort. 

 

Nicola, her partner, and her staff spend twenty minutes sitting comfortably around her office sharing stories and laughing.  Malcolm’s arm sporadically curls around her hips, his fingers tease at the base of the zipper at the side of her dress.  It is an entirely pleasant occasion until Nicola checks her little gold watch and mumbles “Shit, I have to go.”  Setting her fork on her plate and casting her gaze to Gillian.  Her adviser takes up Nicola’s coat and a hefty folder, waiting for her by the door. 

Malcolm stands and trails his other half out of her office, fingers settling on the small of her back as he walks her to her car.

“You know, I could come with yeh.”  Malcolm observes mildly.  The Health Secretary turns to him with a patient and affectionate look on her face.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, darling, but if I never have to deal with you in a professional context again as long as I live it will still be too fucking soon.” 

A light smile touches Malcolm’s lips.  “Fine.  Fuck off to the BBC.”  He takes her by the hips and pulls her forward until they are flush against his, until she is close enough for him to kiss her.  “Just make sure you come home.  No running off with Paxman.”

“I won’t if you make sure there’s cake at home.” 

“Depends if it’s eaten itself.”  The Scot quips, squeezing Nicola’s hand briefly before she slides into her mid-range government saloon. 

 

* * *

 

 

Malcolm Tucker is a man who knows his partner well enough to have purchased two cakes and secreted one in their fridge.  Because of this, there is an ample supply of cake awaiting Nicola when she returns, and she is very grateful.  It’s not that her interview was bad, per se, it’s merely that Paxman is ‘the daddy’, as Malcolm would put it, and she feels like she has been absolutely through the wringer. 

The first thing she hears when she enters is a familiar Scottish accent remarking “Gilly said you had a sandwich at the Beeb.”  She follows the sound of it and finds him reclining on the couch with a laptop on his knee, tapping away at a communications plan for one of his clients.  Nicola settles her fingers on his shoulders and begins rubbing little circles at the base of his neck.  The pausing of his hands over his keyboard is all Nicola needs to tell her that she has found a very good spot indeed.  Her fingers trail lightly through his hair before Nicola drops to her knees behind him, folds her arms over the arm of the couch and peers over his shoulder.  She can feel him resisting the urge to mumble “Just four more lines, pet,” and frankly she would not stand for it if he did.  Their lives are a series of just-four-more-lines, just-checking-this-speech, let-me-memorise-these-stats-quickly, and because of this significant dates are observed under military-style orders.  Her intention had been to gauge whose communication strategy was important enough that Malcolm had not snapped his computer shut as soon as he’d heard the door close, but she is distracted by the nearness of him, and turns her head slightly to the left to inhale the illustrious scent of him.  His smell is warm and enticing, and sends a familiar stab of longing straight to her abdomen.  She is about to kiss his neck in such a way that he will be rendered unable to continue working, but a name catches her attention out of the corner of her eye, and suddenly she is demanding “You are absolutely not fucking writing a communications strategy for Simon Cowell.”  It’s an accusation, a demand of how he could possibly have neglected to tell her such a piece of information. 

“I am absolutely fucking not.  Ten points to the Minister.”  He taps out another sentence quickly, and she can see what he’s trying to do: delay her until he has completed his task.

“Then you have a  thirty page document with the words ‘Simon Cowell’ in the footer because...?”

“Because he has a net worth of two hundred and fifty million quid and an annual salary of fifty six mill all from being an arrogant monkey-fucking cunt.  I mean, he can buy an’ sell Clarkson four times over for only a minor increase in cuntery.  It’s a solid communications model, Nic’la.” 

Nicola laughs softly to herself and rests her head on his shoulder, letting the tension of her interview ebb away from her and a different tension entirely overtake her. 

“Yeh handled yerself with Paxman,” Malcolm observes, still typing.  Nicola is willing to give him two more minutes before she slams the screen shut on his fingers.  Of course she would not, in actuality, do such a thing.  Malcolm Tucker's fingers are a vital factor in her overall state of satisfaction in life, and she would damage them at her own peril. 

“Oh god, except for the part where he asked whether I’d take my children to any hospital in the country and then started listing the worst performing hospitals and all the diseases - ”

“Shut up, yeh daft bint, that was actually one of yer best answers.”

“Oh.  Did I say something clever to that?  I got distracted thinking about Ella getting golden staph and - ”

Malcolm presses a button on the remote control; the television awakes from standby and Nicola’s face fills the screen.  He feels her wince, but smirks to himself as he continues to type. 

“ - Obviously everyone wants to be able to take their family to the best medical facilities available.  Overall, the United Kingdom is a world-leader in health services, but I’m very mindful of the - of the need to ensure that every hospital, every doctors’ surgery, every emergency department is up to scratch.  Under the previous Government, health funding was absolutely eviscerated - ”

“That’s a strong word, Minister.” 

“It was a disgraceful thing to do.  So I’m committed to ensuring that every one of our medical facilities is well funded - ”  Malcolm clicks off the television mid way through her sentence, and only now does she notice his laptop is gone from his lap.

“It was a fucking brilliant answer, actually.”  He smirks, glasses perched on his nose. 

“How did you know I would - ?”

“Because I fucking live with you, Nic’la.  Half the time I know what’s going on in that shiny little, rainbow-vomiting-unicorn filled mind of yers better than you do.”

“Well then I hope you’re aware that right now I’m thinking a) how sad I am you’ve already taken off my favourite tie, and b)” her hand snakes down his chest and her fingers dip between the buttons of his shirt to brush his bare skin, her breath is hot against his ear, “if you don’t come upstairs with me right now I can’t be held responsible for my actions.” 

Malcolm does not need to be told twice, and soon his only thoughts are _‘fucking side zippers’_ and _‘thank fucking god for stay up stockings’_.  Any thoughts of Jeremys, be they Paxmans or Clarksons, are long forgotten by Nicola, and she is, as always, very, very glad she has left Malcolm’s hands intact. 

 

* * *

 

While Nicola is still attempting to rebuild herself from the shattered mess Malcolm has made her, the Scot has already regained both his composure, and his power of speech.  “D’you want cake?”  He askes, sweeping his eyes over Nicola’s superbly unfurled body, her still trembling fingers.  Dark eyes with blown pupils meet his and Malcolm is physically incapable of restraining himself.  He leans over and kisses her, pleased to feel the eagerness of her response.  He clambers over her to get out of the bed, and she is bemused by the fact that he is older than her but still has a better recovery rate than she does.  She catches his hand when he’s off the bed and pulls him back to her, sitting up and kissing him hungrily.  “Malcolm, that was - I mean - ”

“The best Birthday sex ye’ve ever had.  I know.”  She laughs softly at him being so fucking cocksure; he kisses her nose then her forehead before slipping off to retrieve the cake.  Nicola thinks she probably appreciates his arse as much as he does hers.

 

The bedding is an irreparable mess, so Malcolm ignores the usual mode of bed sharing and slips beneath the covers at the foot of the bed, legs tangled with Nicola’s.  He sets the sizeable plate of cake on the empty expanse of bed beside them, but is too distracted to eat it when he notices the goosebumps forming over her breasts and arms.  He does nothing to stop them, merely requests that she throws him a pillow.  Malcolm tucks this behind his back and watches as Nicola takes a sizeable forkful of cake.  His hands close around her right foot and begin gently working the kinks out of it.  Between the cake and the massage, Nicola is all but purring with pleasure.  Each has an impossibly busy day tomorrow but neither can muster the energy to give half a shit. 

“This was perfect, Malcolm.”  Nicola mumbles, running the toes of her free foot against his leg gratefully.  She adjusts the blankets over herself, finally acknowledging the cold her body has obviously been feeling.

“Well, it _was_.”  Malcolm retorts around a mouthful of cake with a pointed nod to her now covered breasts. 

She smiles lazily at him, “No, really.  Thank you.”

“Well I love you, don’t I?  Even if yeh are a dozy fucking bint sometimes.  And you love yer Birthday.  It’s just modus ponendo fucking ponens, isn’t it?”  Again, the brunette laughs, forking another piece of cake into her mouth and shaking her head.

“At this time of night I have no fucking idea what it is other than your usual modus operandi.” 

“I feel like there should be an extra fuck in there...”  Malcolm comments, still massaging idly at her foot. 

“Well, if you insist.”  Nicola smirks, pushing the cake away and crawling onto Malcolm’s lap.  The Scot drops his head to her throat, sucking at her pulse point and making her moan before pulling away and looking her steadily in the eye. 

“If anyone had told me ten years ago I’d fall in love with you I would have called them clinically insane.”  Nicola observes, tracing his lips with her fingertips.  She swallows and her voice drops to a whisper, as if some part of her still fears the rejection she always expected would go hand in hand with loving Malcolm Tucker.  “But I love you so much.”

“And I utterly fucking adore you,” Malcolm growls, before crashing his lips against hers hard enough to bruise. 

Nicola doubts she will ever taste caramel mudcake with French vanilla and honey icing without feeling Malcolm’s lips on hers again. 


	6. "My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray had not kissed goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was planning this to be over, but something came to me that wouldn't quite leave me alone. It gets harder before it gets easier, so let me say at this point, if you want it to just end after Nicola's Birthday, you can happily leave it there and I will not judge you.
> 
> If you read this new section, you need to trust me for the next three chapters/17,000 words, or you will not forgive me. I'll be posting the next two on the next two weekends.
> 
> The chapter title is Abraham Lincoln's. 
> 
> Up to you, dear readers. x

Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray’s separation is amicable, after a long period of intense acrimony.

By the time they are dealing with lawyers each has largely learnt to compartmentalise their hurt and simply muddle through the process.  Malcolm barely wastes his energy swearing at her and Nicola barely flinches when he does.  She is steely and contained throughout the official process, and Malcolm barks orders at his lawyer like “Just finish the fucking thing.  I want it done.”  Each discovers it’s a peculiar thing, ending a de-facto relationship.  Neither has the capacity to term it a divorce, even though this is the word most prominently used by their friends. 

 

Malcolm hadn’t realised his entire life was going to crumble when he got home from a publicity junket with a client.  He’d been on the kind of high that usually accompanied the press buying whatever the fuck he sold them.  It’s something he’s come to appreciate in a post-politics media managing role: people are more willing to trust celebrities than their elected officials, and by extension, are more willing to trust their staff.

 

He’d walked into their home that night with long strides, eager to see his partner, eager to tell her the minutia of his trip and hear the petty ins-and-outs of her week at Whitehall.  He’d gotten a text from her before he’d boarded his flight, slightly garbled but nothing really out of the ordinary for his omnishambolic other half.

_Need to speak to you about something when you get home.  Have a safe flight.  I’m so glad you’re on your way.  Xxx N_

And then another a moment another had flashed upon his screen.

_I’ve really missed you._

Nicola has always been somewhat prone to periods of separation-based-hysteria, so he’d not thought anything of it.  He’d fired back:

_You’re a daft bint.  Love you._

He’d found her sitting on the couch when he arrived, still in the neat dress he’d seen her wearing in oral questions.  Looking back Malcolm’s not sure when he worked something was wrong with the picture, even though something so clearly had been.  She had obviously been steeled for battle; her feet were on the floor not tucked beneath her, and it had always been a rare occurrence for Nicola to still be in work clothes if Malcolm arrived home later than her.  Malcolm, while he may have clocked all this, thought nothing of it as he dropped onto one knee on the couch beside Nicola and kissed her thoroughly.  Nicola had noticed the suggestion of airline grade Scotch on his tongue; her own mouth had felt drier than the Sahara. 

“So good to be home.”  Malcolm had mumbled, content to take in the texture of her hair beneath his fingers, the smell of her skin.  He had not noticed that Nicola’s little whimper was not borne out of pleasure, but stress.  He had not noticed her shoulder muscles warring between releasing at his presence and coiling with tension.  He had not made anything of the fact that she did not shift their positions and snog him senseless right there.  She had touched his face timidly, as if she had no right to do so, and when Malcolm had trapped her hand against his cheek, turning to kiss the inside of her wrist, she had said his name in such a way that his blue eyes had snapped to her lovely dark ones.  This was the first sign of trouble for Malcolm, and really, looking back, it most definitely should not have been. 

Before she had even spoken, her eyes had begged for apology.  Malcolm had cursed himself for spending as long as he did in politics, for having a career centred upon reading people, and failing to notice that the woman he loved was very obviously about to shatter his entire world.

“It can’t be as bad as all that, pet.”  He’d said it gently as he caressed her cheek with long fingers, but there had been no hint of a smile on his lips, no softening of his eyes as he assessed her reaction.  

“Malcolm, I...”

“What?”  He had withdrawn from her then, leaving no physical contact between them. 

“Something... happened.”

“D’you think maybe you could just spit out whatever the fuck it is yeh’re tryin’ t’say, Nic’la?  Because I am very fucking tired.”  The thickening of his accent had been as clear a sign as any of his tension, and Nicola had willed herself not to cry.

“It’s not easy for me to say this, it’s just” a catch in her voice; desperation to make him understand, terror that he never would.  “Malcolm I’m so sorry.”

Malcolm’s hostility had masked the genuine dread welling within him for whatever she was about to say.  The conclusion, however much he didn’t want to believe it, had been obvious.

“Would you please tell me what exactly you’re witterin’ about?  Fuck me dead, you’ve not been this completely fucking inarticulate since you were Leader.” 

Nicola has never been quite sure whether Malcolm had been wounding her out of defence, or whether he had been trying to provoke her to the point where she could injure him back. 

“I’m so sorry.”  She’d repeated.  “Malcolm, I love you so much and I am so, so sorry.”  She had felt like he would fill her silence here, perhaps even draw her into his arms and tell her they could sort it out, whatever _it_ was.  Had he not sensed that anything which would prompt this reaction in her would be unforgivable, he would have done exactly that.  Instead he had left her hanging in silence, his gaze hard and unyielding. 

Finally Nicola had mustered the will to mumble “I slept with someone else.”

She had expected Malcolm to scream at her, to give her the bollocking she so deserved.  Instead he had uttered a concerningly contained “Who?”

A quick deliberation and Nicola had decided to tell him.  “Andrew.”

“Andrew Watckins?”  Nicola had nodded, unable to form the word ‘yes’, the final affirmation that, yes, her life was about to crumble before her eyes and this time it was entirely her fault.

“Never thought you’d be one of the MPs who throw their keys into the Chamber’s chamber pot.”

“Malcolm - ”

“When?”  He’d demanded, refusing her the chance to speak.

“After... After the Super Schools announcement.”

His ire had peaked again.  “You’ve been keeping this from me fer two fucking months?  Where.”  ‘Where’ had been more a demand, an accusation, than a question.

“Malcolm this isn’t going to help anything - ”

“I get to decide what shitting pieces of turd-shaped fact are helpful here, Nic’la!  Where?”

“I’m not playing this game with you.”

“Was it here?  Did you bring Andrew Fucking Watckins to my house and let him fuck you?”

“No!  Malcolm, no.”  She had been torn between wanting to hit him for talking about her in such terms, even though she’d of course heard worse from him, and feeling in some part of her that she had earned whatever he threw at her.  “Malcolm I would never do that to you.”

“Well I didn’t think yeh’d spread your fucking legs for another Member because I was a wee bit fucking busy at work!”

Nicola had visibly flinched, and finally Malcolm felt some modicum of satisfaction. 

“Did you go to a hotel?” 

“No.  No, it wasn’t that premeditated it just... it just _happened_ , Malcolm.”

“In your office?”

“No.  Of course not, no!”  He had felt an unwanted release of tension upon hearing this.  To fuck someone else in her office is something Malcolm would have found almost as big a violation as her fucking someone else in their house.

“His?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus cunting _Christ_ , Nicola...”

“I was... I was pissed and I was lonely and I wanted you!  I wanted you and you’d barely touched me for weeks and - ”

“Don’t!  Don’t you _dare_!  Don’t you _fucking_ dare turn this around on me and make this my fucking fault!  Because I’m busy?  In case you haven’t noticed recently, _darling_ , we’re both very fucking busy people and d’you know something?  Even when you’ve been off fannying about in the Commons every night until the wee fucking hours I have _never_ even fucking considered touching anyone else!  And d’you think people haven’t offered?  I’ve had twenty year old interns all but _begging_ to be bent over my fucking desk and slipped a stiff one and I have _never_ even...”  Malcolm had seemed to run out of steam then.  Perhaps the enormity of the situation had hit him, perhaps he’d simply run out of words.  His hand had rubbed across his face wearily, and Nicola had wanted to reach for it, to kiss his fingers and pull him into her arms and pretend this was all a very realistic but very horrible dream.  As it stood, she had been afraid to touch him. 

“I love you.  That’s why I would never fucking do something like that to you.”

“Malcolm - ”

“Shut yer fucking cave, Nic’la.  I don’t want to hear any more.” 

For once, Nicola had done as she was told without protest.  Malcolm had dropped back onto the couch beside her after pacing around the room with his earlier monologue.  His elbows had come to rest on his knees, his fingers running over his face.  He had pinched his lip between them thoughtfully. 

“Is this how you felt when you found out James was cheating on you?”

“Cheated.  Once.  Past tense.  I fucked up I just... I just fucked up.”

“Is this how you felt?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Nicola had steadied herself for a moment, trying to will the pieces of her life to stick together again.  “Because I didn’t love James anymore.  I guess I was shocked and upset but I - ”

“You saw it coming is what you’re tryin’ t’say.  And I fucking didn’t because I love you.  And I fucking trusted you.”  His words may have been muffled by his hands, but the pain in them was so clear it could have been broadcast from a megaphone.

 

If Malcolm Tucker’s brain is made of packets of crisps, his heart is a nuclear missile proof safe which only a handful of people have access to, containing an assortment of origami.  Nicola Murray is the first person who has ever been granted access to the safe only to take it upon herself to pick the wings off all the butterflies and crush all the cranes. 

“Was it good?  Was he good at fucking you?”  The edge to Malcolm’s tone had been terrifying.  Anyone who knew him less well would have been pondering their physical safety.  For Nicola his tone had cut her more deeply than any weapon ever could.

“It was _awful_ , Malcolm.  It was awful because all I wanted in the entire sodding world was to have you there.  I missed you so much and it felt so fucking...  _wrong_ to have someone else touching me.  Malcolm, I know this is so completely, one hundred percent my fuck up but I would give anything to go back and change it.  I actually mean anything.  This is the stupidest thing I’ve done in my entire fucking life and you know that I’ve done some _really_ fucking stupid things.”

“You can’t rewrite history, Nic’la.”  His tone had been soft and broken, his words a simple fact that nevertheless ended something of critical importance to both of them.

“You used to have a bit of a knack for it.”  She had ventured.  The look he’d shot at her told her it was still too soon for levity, and she is sorry for the miscalculation to this day.

Nicola had seen the set of Malcolm’s muscles, his shoulders, and had known the answer to the question before it had passed her lips. 

“Is there any chance you can forgive me for this?”  What she had wanted to do was beg him to forgive her, to change his mind and not hate her - at the very least to _try_ not to hate her - but she had known pressuring him would only make him resist the situation more.  What kind of man would Malc The Great and Powerful be if he had been so easily swayed by the words of the woman he had loved?  No matter how long they had been together she had known this would always, in some way, be a consideration for him.  Nevertheless, she can still recall the chant of _‘please forgive me’_ that had pounded through her mind as regularly as her pulse.

Part of Malcolm had wanted to say that of course he could try.  He could be a grownup and move past this, because surely one major fuckup shouldn’t be enough to derail years upon years of happiness.  A normal person would move on from this lone infraction.  Malcolm Tucker is not a man who has ever considered himself to be normal. 

 

In one fluid move Malcolm had risen from the couch and collected his suitcase, still full from his trip. 

“Where are you going?”  Nicola had demanded, but she had known even then that he would leave her; she had known that he would not come back. 

“Can you do something for me, Nic’la?”  Malcolm had asked.  His tone had been gentler, suggestive of some kind of hope.  Nicola’s entire body had twinged at the possibility that maybe he was going to gather his thoughts, maybe he would think this through and come to the same conclusion that she had, that despite a major failure of judgement, Nicola was the person who would love him more than anyone else, despite his many flaws.  Was she asking that much more from him? 

Nicola had shifted forward on the couch, wanting to cross to him but respecting that he hadn’t wanted to be touched by her. 

“Anything.”  She had answered, and she had almost meant it.  She had considered that perhaps he would ask her to leave Parliament, and the part of Nicola that had thought maybe loving him was more important than her life’s work had been prepared to contemplate such a request.

Knowing her weaknesses and her sore spots better than anyone else had allowed Malcolm to bring her to this point of openness, of possibility, before destroying her on the spot. 

“ _Never_ fucking speak to me again.”

 

With that Malcolm Tucker had slammed the door to their house and left his erstwhile partner to decide how best to collect the jagged fragments of her life.  

 

Malcolm Tucker and Nicola Murray had not kissed goodbye. 


	7. "Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Nicola kisses Malcolm since their separation he is unconscious and drugged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, most of you hate me a lot after the last chapter. I am sorry for this. (Megales, we can work through it! Please forgive me!)
> 
> I hope this chapter makes up for it somewhat. It's a long one. 
> 
> Chapter name is Winston Churchill's.

It is Sam Cassidy who calls her first, closely followed by Malcolm’s sister Wendy. 

When Nicola Murray’s phone trills its ringtone loudly and unexpectedly on a Friday afternoon, her initial instinct is to wonder how she neglected to switch it to silent mode during her surgery.  Upon closer examination, she is pleasantly surprised to see Sam Cassidy’s name flash across her screen.  She’s not spoken to the younger woman in months and is instantly ready to ask if she’s free for coffee or lunch in the immediate future. 

Based on this, Nicola excuses herself humbly.  Her greeting to Sam is a warm “Sam!  How are you?  It’s so lovely to hear from you.”

The other woman’s tone affects a localised Ice Age within Nicola’s chest.  “Nicola, it’s Malcolm.” 

Suddenly Nicola’s mind is reeling, hurtling through possibilities like _‘oh god he’s been hit by a bus, he’s been in a plane crash, he’s been trampled to death getting onto the tube’_.  Why Nicola is so quick to lurch to this end of the realm of possibilities is anyone’s guess.  Why she feels, even after slightly more than three years’ separation, like the earth has been pulled out from beneath her and she may well vomit right here is also anyone’s guess.  Nicola makes a gesture to one of her staff and sinks onto a plush couch in the library where she’s holding this week’s surgery. 

 

Somehow Nicola thinks her brain always works fastest when things are going worst, and now is no exception.  She’s confronted with a potted history of Life With Malcolm: morning kisses.  Shouting matches.  Mutual foot-rubs.  An eventual destruction that was entirely her own fault.  She flashes to the card he sent her at Christmastime.  It had been the first she’d heard from in him in over a year, and then all of a sudden there it had been, an envelope with unmistakable handwriting and a return address she used to call her own.  A picture of Parliament in the snow had greeted her, inside the simple message _“I hope you’re happy, pet.  M.”_   The card had been too thoughtful and too appropriate to receive from someone Nicola had worked incredibly hard to convince herself she had no right to love anymore, someone she is certain no longer loves her.

“Is he...?” 

“They’re running tests.”  Relief floods Nicola’s body.  Tests mean doctors and hospitals and places where diagnosis can happen and medical support can be given.  Tests mean he’s alive.  Tests mean Nicola does not have to cope with the idea of a world without Malcolm Tucker in it, nor does she have to analyse why this is such an upsetting prospect for her.  While she knows many people from the political world who would dance upon the Scot’s grave (both figuratively and literally in some cases), Nicola has never had quite this reaction to him in their very long association.  Something about Malcolm had always encouraged Nicola to trust him, and despite repeated betrayals, she had done so. 

“He passed out at work.  His partner - at the firm that is - ” Sam adds the last as if she can see Nicola wincing on the other end of the phone.  “She said he’s seemed really sick for weeks.  Pale and out of sorts.” 

Nicola rakes a hand through hair that has been tamed by an ocean of serum and tries to keep herself in one piece. 

“They called an ambulance.  Listen, Nicola I know you two aren’t... anymore, but.  I don’t know.  I felt like you should know.  I think you should be there.”

“Can you text me the details?”

“Already have.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“No, Sam, I mean thank you.  Thank you for calling me.  You know I still...  He still matters to me, that’s all.”

“I know, Nicola.”

“Keep me in the loop, okay?  I’ll get down there as soon as I can.”

“Will do.”

 

Before Nicola has a chance to utterly crumble in her seat, her phone trills in her fingers again.  “Wendy - ”

“Stevie, I’m so sorry to bother you, I know ye’re busy.”  Nicola smiles at her erstwhile sort-of-sister-in-law’s pet name for her.  It had started as Stevie Nicks and ended as just Stevie.  Nicola, with her particular aversion to being called ‘Nicky’, had felt so accepted and included when Wendy and her family had found a nickname for Nicola that she’d not totally hated. 

Malcolm had been cooking when he’d first heard Wendy use it.  They were in Scotland for Isabelle’s Birthday; she’d been busy terrifying Nicola while Malcolm was preparing dinner and Nicola was trying to carve out enough space in the little kitchen to bake a cake.  A cake which Isabelle had repeatedly insisted she’d not wanted. 

When Wendy had let herself in, inundated with bags of groceries, she had stepped behind Nicola in the kitchen and kissed her cheek from behind, grinning, “Stevie Nicks!  What an honour.”

“What was that Wend?”  Malcolm had smiled slightly, processing the nickname.

“Stevie Nicks.  Surely ye’ve worked out by now that the increase in frequency of my Stevie Nicks references is because I’m referrin’ to yer lovely-non-bride?”

“I thought yeh just had terrible taste, hen.”

“You’re not as big a prick as yeh try t’be, yknow tha’?”  Wendy had pouted wryly at her brother, smoothing her hands over his shoulders, and kissing him hello. 

“Where’s Mam?” 

“Taking a break from terrorising me?”  Nicola had mumbled into the bowl of cake mix.

Before anyone had had a chance to examine Nicola’s comment, Chloé had bustled in the door with her rapidly expanding Labrador puppy and a bright trill of “Hey, Nicola!” 

Nicola had brightened instantly and abandoned her cooking to embrace the teenager.  “Hello!  How’s my brilliant girl?” 

“Fine.  School’s a bitch, though.”

“Chloé Isabelle McNair, we’ve discussed this.  The bitch-ness of school is why we bought you a puppy.”

“And don’t get me wrong, I love Leo, but having a dog named Leonardo LabVinci doesn’t actually guarantee getting good marks in A Level Art.”

Nicola had run her fingers through Chloé’s dark curls, her tone becoming soothing.  “I know it’s a hassle now, Chlo, but trust me, you’re better to get it over with.  Katie had to jump through every hoop you can imagine when she decided she actually did want to go to college.” 

“How’d she manage in the end, Steves?”  Wendy had asked, fishing through her handbag for her glasses.

“She dropped the ‘my-mother’s-a-Cabinet-Minister’ line at _every_ opportunity.”

“Humblebrag.”  Malcolm had sniped, his lips quirking while his gaze remained trained on the roast he was preparing.

“Excuse me, that was not a fucking humblebrag!  It was a statement of fact.”  Nicola had retorted, mouth agape with her indignation.

“Good god, Nicola, did you pick that language up from this here son of mine, or have yeh always been as bad as him?”  Nicola had continued to play with her niece’s hair, had almost smiled because that had sounded like the Isabelle version of affection.

“Taught her ev’rything she knows, Mam.” 

“Like hell you did.”  Had been Nicola’s retort, and any ground she may have gained with Isabelle in the last few minutes had been up in smoke.

“Just don’t be corruptin’ mah only granddaughter.”  Nicola hadn’t been sure whether the dig was more directed at Malcolm for never procreating or herself for being too old and too ambitious to bully him into doing so.

“That’s alright, Isabelle, I think we’ve corrupted mine enough to last a lifetime.” 

The older woman’s quiet ‘humph’ hadn’t gone unnoticed by anyone. 

“Chlo, can you do me a favour and stop getting so monstrously tall?”  Nicola had mumbled, turning the teenager in her hands and sweeping her gaze from Chloé’s purple Doc Marten’s with their bright yellow laces to her red plaid shirt.  In many ways Chloé has always reminded Nicola of a more level headed version of Katie. 

“Brian’s a fucking mountain, Nic’la.  She’ll have you under her chin by next year.”

“And you too, presumably.”  Nicola had shot back at her partner with an affectionate smile.  Malcolm had bitten back a quip about being big enough for Nicola, instead depositing the roast back in the oven, wiping his hands on a towel and emerging from the kitchen.

“Are you too big to give your old uncle a hug hello?”

“’Course not.”  Chloé had smirked, the expression eerily like her uncle’s whenever he referred to his other half as a frump. 

“She’s right, though, pet.  You’re not just an insolent ankle-biter anymore.  Yeh’re fucking tall.”

“You’re such a shit, Uncle Malcolm.” 

Nicola had snorted with laughter.  “Took me years to work out the full extent of that fact, Chlo.”

 

“Steves, are yeh there?”

“Wendy, I’m so sorry.  I’m a bit overwhelmed.  Malcolm’s old PA called me.” 

“Me too.  I’m so worried about him, Stevie.  D’you know anything?”

“Just that he collapsed at work.”

“Jesus, what’s wrong with him?”  Wendy’s voice trembles dangerously.  She is not equipped to imagine a world without her big brother.

“I don’t know.  I only know what Sam told me, and she didn’t seem to have much.”

For once Nicola is concealing the tension she’s feeling quite well.  For a woman prone to descending into panic, she really does seem to be handling the situation very well. 

On the other end of the phone Wendy descends into unsteady tears.  “Oh my god what’s wrong with him, Nicola?” 

“Wendy, I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

“Will he?  Because he’s not been - ”

“Not been what?”  Nicola asks, ears pricking.  Has he not been coping?  Does he miss her? 

“Nothing.  Nothin’, I don’t know wha’ I’m sayin’.”  Nicola can hear Wendy back-peddling but she knows this isn’t the right moment to push it.

“Look, I’m going down there as soon as I can end this meeting.  I promise I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

“Thank you so much, Steves.  I miss you, y’know?” 

“I miss you too.  Look if - if you need to” Nicola lets out an unsteady breath, “to come down to visit him you’re welcome to stay at mine.  I mean, you’ll probably stay at our - ” now Nicola’s voice catches audibly.  “At the big house.  At Malcolm’s.  Malcolm’s house.  Forget I said anything.”

“I’ll see how I go, Nic’la.  But I appreciate the offer.  And I mean wherever I stay I’ll be in yer pocket whenever yeh’re not running the whole bloody health system, alrigh’?”

“I’ll hold you to that, Wend.”

“Tell him I’ll fucking murder him if he’s not okay, righ’?”

“I’ll do my best.  If I last that long without being thrown out.”

 

Nicola rings off and pulls herself back together enough to slip back into her surgery.  “I’m so sorry for the interruption Mr and Mrs Jones.  Gillian, could I borrow you for a moment?” 

The strawberry blonde flips closed the notebook, rises and crosses to her boss.  She itches at one of her eyes, and in different circumstances Nicola would ask her why she’s still bothering with contact lenses when they clearly drive her mad.

Nicola taps the base of her phone against her palm, and Gillian correctly picks it as one of Nicola’s more extreme anxiety signifiers.  She first remembers it rearing its head when Nicola was preparing for her first Question Time as Health Secretary.  Gillian had understood at the time; David Dimbleby can be formidable.  She does not understand what has prompted it now. 

The brunette tucks her hair behind her ear, fingers unsteady.

“Right, Gilly, I know this is going to be a massive arse ache for you, but I need to leave.”

“Sure, I can handle that.  Is everything okay?  The kids are alright, yeah?”

“What?  Yes, the kids are all in one piece.  Well, four respective pieces I hope.  Hopefully with no extra pieces growing inside them.  Anyway, that’s not the point.”

Gilly settles a reassuring hand on the brunette’s arm.  “Nicola, talk to me.  You’re trembling.  What’s going on?”

“It’s - it’s Malcolm.  He’s in hospital.  I don’t really know much more, but  I just...  I feel like I should be there.  And I mean, he probably won’t want me there but I just - ”

“Hey, Nicola, it’s okay.  I understand.  I’ll sort things out.”

“I’d lose my head without you, Gilly.”

Gillian’s reply is nothing short of insolent.  Nicola doesn’t have the energy to mind.  “I know.  That’s why you have staff.”

The politician in Nicola knows that she absolutely should go back in and apologise to her constituents.  Despite this, she squeezes Gilly’s arm and all but jogs out of the room. 

 

 

When Nicola quietly enters his hospital room, she is taken aback at the sight of Malcolm Tucker when he is genuinely ailing.  She’s seen him ill before of course, dramatically rolled her eyes when he demands cheese balls instead of proffered soup and the whole catastrophe of it.  But right now things are different.  He is deathly pale and gaunt, looking like he’s been subsisting on Fanta alone.  Nicola’s stomach lurches with that strange protective, possessive mechanism that hasn’t seemed to leave her in all the time they’ve been apart.  Before she remembers herself she feels guilty for not cooking enough, then recalls that of course she’s not cooked for him in years. 

Even though he’s skeletally thin and paper white, he has the audacity to be reading a heavy document with his glasses perched on his nose.  Given a twenty percent increase in saturation, a five kilogram increase in body fat, and a different room surrounding his bed, Malcolm looks rather like someone she used to regularly wake up next to.  Malcolm looks like Wednesday Night Malcolm or Saturday Morning Malcolm.  A smirk pulls at her lips; this pale he looks more like 3:30am on Monday Malcolm, the one who used to wake her up and get a right bollocking because she had to be up in two hours and was hoping to look human.

In a moment of defiance she clips over and plucks the document from his hands.  “Who let you have this in here?  Jesus, you look like you were rescued off HMS Iolaire.” 

“Who the fuck told you I was here.”  It’s more a threat than a question. 

“Sam, actually.  Then your sister.”

“Jesus fucking _Christ._ ”  Groans the Scot.  “And these are the people who are supposed to be on my fucking side.” 

“Have you ever thought that maybe they actually are?  That maybe - ”  Nicola cuts herself off, eyes dropping from his face.  It’s too soon to say things like ‘maybe it’s actually good for you to have someone here who cares about you’.

“That maybe somewhere between idiocy and incompetence lies Nicola Murray?”

“Is that the Calvin Klein ‘Obsession’ tagline you’re invoking, Malcolm?  Because if it is, it’s nice to know you still care.”

Malcolm’s blood is about to boil in his veins; Nicola can see the bile rising in his mouth, the slight pulling back of his lips in a standard issue Tucker snarl. 

“Yeh’re right.  It’s more like whichever fucking car brand that said when it comes to giving Malcolm Tucker a _colossal_ fucking headache, there’s no substitute for Nicola Murray.”

“I left my fucking surgery for you!  I walked out on constituents!  So maybe before you decide I’m the worst thing that’s happened to you today you could take a minute to think about the fact that I’m seemingly the only person who gives enough of a shit about you to actually be here.”

The acrimony between them crackles in the air, and in the tense silence Malcolm takes the time to really look at her. 

It’s not that he’s not seen her since the breakup.  They’ve crossed paths exchanging the children on occasion, and of course he’s seen her on television more often than he’d like, but this is the first time in years he’s seen her looking so unkempt.  Her hair is frizzy and flyaway, as if she’s been racing around so much that the serum she so relies on has vacated her follicles.  Parts of it are sticking to her forehead and the nape of her neck, and he wonders how much she must have been rushing almost as much as he wonders _why_ she would still be rushing to him.  He’d had no response to the card he’d sent her at Christmas, not even a text to say ‘thank you’.  Ella had mentioned that it had sat on the mantelpiece for a good three months after the tree came down before disappearing. 

Katie had remarked in passing that she’d found it in a drawer in her mother’s bedroom one day when she was replacing the spare key to her flat. 

Part of him is relieved that she’s not shown up looking perfectly quaffed and camera ready.  She is more his when she is unkempt, and this fact makes him slightly less likely to verbally tear her limb from limb.

Malcolm sweeps his eyes over her again, from her nude heels and up her burgundy dress that she’s been wearing for years and has never tired of.  She is encased in a heavy bone coloured trench coat, but when she shifts her weight he sees her Parliamentary security pass peeking out.  The Commons isn’t in session; she is blatantly brandishing the thing to avoid getting thrown out of the hospital when he inevitably calls for security. 

“Nice touch with the pass there, Nic’la.  It’s not goin’ t’stop me having yeh thrown out on your arse, but nice try.”

“Did it ever occur to you that two of the people who care most about you in the whole fucking world thought I should be here?  Could we not just put everything behind us for a minute?  Even if it’s just long enough for me to say that when Sam called me I was fucking terrified that something had happened to you.”  After she announces all this she pulls her coat from her body and crosses to a chair against the wall.  It’s as far away from his bed as she can be, and he’s sure that’s deliberate.  She drops her handbag beside the chair and he notes the telltale signs of _Nicola-Murray-Settling-In_.

“Don’t you fucking dare get comfortable in my fucking hospital room!  I’ve said I don’t want yeh here, Nic’la so I really think you should shit off back to wherever and whatever and fucking _whoever_ yeh were doing when Sam phoned you.”

“Not that it fucking matters to you, Malcolm, but as I’ve said, I was holding a surgery when Sam phoned me.  I left a meeting with constituents because your old PA phoned me and said you were in hospital.  I’ve cancelled a policy committee meeting tonight.  So you can spend as much time hating me as you want, but I’ve actually reorganised some reasonably important aspects of my life to be here.”

“Aren’t you supposed t’be on Sky tonigh’?”

“Claire’s subbing for me.  Nice that you’re still paying attention, though.”  Her sardonic tone ruffles him further, but what’s worse for Malcolm is the vivid memory of the last time he was in a hospital with her. 

A frantic call from James in the middle of the night.  Twelve year old Josh having his appendix out.  Him trying to convince Nicola that her panicking wouldn’t fix Josh any faster than a surgeon could.  Nicola falling asleep against his side on an uncomfortable hospital couch.  When she awoke he’d told her if she funded the NHS better she wouldn’t have such a crick in her neck from the fucking couch.  He’d earned a smile and a cataclysmic disaster of a woman dropping her head back into the curve of his neck, and Malcolm Tucker, bastard extraordinaire, had felt truly settled for the first time in his life.

The fact that Malcolm Tucker misses this feeling contributes significantly to how much bile is bursting from his thin frame. 

Malcolm gets half way through the sentence “don’t flatter yerself darling” when pain causes his muscles to whip into tight cords and his teeth to grit hard enough that he’s worried he may crack one.  Nicola is frozen in space.  Half of her is screaming to cross the room, to close the gap between them and let him clasp her hand.  She wants to soothe him with her fingers through his hair, even though it is damp with sweat.  She wants to press her palm to his forehead and feel for herself how bad his temperature is, for even at this distance she can tell he has one. 

Once all of these things would have been acceptable.  Now they quite clearly are not, and she fears his reaction should she attempt any of them, fears what it would do to him to unleash his full temper in what is clearly a precarious physical state. 

Malcolm sees all of this flashing through her mind, because although he may have failed spectacularly to read her on the night he left, as a general rule, Nicola Murray is a reasonably known quantity to him.  Even with pain making his vision less reliable than usual, he perceives the moment when she goes to uncross her legs and cross to him as clearly as if she had completed the action rather than merely adjusted her seat a little. 

Finally Nicola can no longer stand to watch this in tight silence.  She rises and closes the distance between them, but where Malcolm is half expecting her to perch on the edge of the bed and focus him, talk him through it as she once would have, instead she leans over his head and retrieves his call button. 

There are two major implications to this action, and Malcolm assumes she must be aware of them, considering he’s deduced them and he’s on rather a lot of heavy duty painkillers.  The first is that he is confronted with the formerly beloved curve of her breasts directly above his face, and Malcolm’s mind is suddenly flooded with her again: her supple body and the warmth of her, the fact that while he may not have told her often, he liked waking up with her in his arms and her mad hair attacking his face.  He is too near to the little smattering of freckles on her ribcage which he cumulatively spent hours nibbling, and his mind is now demanding he give his attention to a fragment of a memory, his mad, claustrophobic, ticklish other half squirming with laughter as he teased her skin with his teeth.  Malcolm pushes the memory away, because all the things he believed her to be in those moments she is not.  Although that said, why he had expected genuine loyalty from a politician is something that still baffles him to this day.

The second, and this one actually causes him some relief, for he doesn’t want to be lying her in complete physical _and_ emotional agony, is that when a nurse comes, he can have her thrown out.  Then he can stop trying to work out how to deal with suddenly having her here again, flesh and bone and just so irritatingly fucking _Nicola_ that he can’t quite work out whether he’d rather kill her or crush her to him and not let go.  His body is hungry for her, no matter how much he has tried to exorcise the memory of her from it.  Her proximity is unfair to him, and now that the pain is so bad his sense of reason is slipping, he feels like touching her may be the only thing that could keep him grounded in this room rather than lost in a violent sea of nausea.

Thankfully Malcolm only falters for a moment; then he is once again consumed by their history, by the image of her being fucked by Andrew Watckins, by a stab of betrayal more painful than the ways his body is presently betraying him. 

Before Malcolm has a chance to comment on any of this, to bite out something cutting at her, a nurse bustles into the room. 

“I didn’t realise your partner was in, Mr Tucker.”  The nurse comments idly in a pronounced Welsh accent.  She sets about checking the rate of his drip, opening it more to give him some relief.

Nicola’s body tenses again.  The logical side of her insists that if he had a partner, she would have been his next of kin.  It would not be Sam.  Nicola would not have been called.  The likelihood is she would not have even been told.  

“No, she’s my bitch of an ex, and I’d really prefer if you directed yer meagre fucking brainpower to giving me some drugs rather than invading my steaming turd of a personal life.”

Nicola is used to Malcolm’s tongue, she is even used to being the one it’s being used to lacerate, but there is something particularly gendered about the word ‘bitch’ that ruffles her feathers and raises her hackles.  She is sure he has selected it for exactly this reason.

“Malcolm!”  She snaps, and even in incredible pain his head whips to her, his blue eyes clamp on her features.  “I’m used to you being an unctuous, parasitic shit to me but you have absolutely no fucking right to speak like that to someone who’s trying to look after you.”  She is fire and brimstone, and even the Big Bad Tucker is a combination of impressed and intimidated right now.  Although that could be the pain talking. 

Nicola turns to his nurse now, her tone completely altered.  “I’m so sorry.  I’d like to say he’s not always like this but he’s usually worse.”

“Oh it’s fine, we get grumpier old buggers in here than this one.”  Nicola can see Malcolm’s blood pressure rising at being spoken over in such a manner, and the corner of her lip has the temerity to twitch into a barely-there smile. 

In another life she would have trailed her fingers through his hair and mumbled ‘See?  You’re not as terrifying as you think you are, darling.’  Sadly that life is years away from where she is now. 

“My name’s Carol.  I’m looking after him for this shift, so anything you need you can come to the desk and ask for me if you’d rather.”

“She won’t be here for the rest of your shift because she’s _fucking off right_ _fucking now_.”

“Thank you so much, Carol.  I know he’s not easy.”  The Welsh woman runs her eyes over Nicola covertly, gaze conveying that she is absolutely _certain_ that Nicola knows how ‘not easy’ Malcolm Tucker can be.  “Sorry, what am I like?  I’m Nicola.” 

Suddenly recognition crosses Carol’s face.  “Oh my god.  You’re Nicola as in Nicola Murray the Health Minister, aren’t you?”  Nicola is surprised; frankly most people couldn’t give a damn about the ins-and-outs of who holds what Ministerial portfolio, even if she has held it for over seven years now.

Nicola pulls her Humble Politician Face, and Malcolm wants to be away from her more than he can articulate in his current state.  “Yes, I am.”

“I’m sorry, Ms Murray.  I’m a bit of a fan, actually.”

“Nicola is fine, really.”  The brunette smiles.  While she is genuinely concerned about the skeletal Scottish shit on the bed, a little part of her does like the recognition. 

“I was here when you visited last year but I didn’t get to say hello.  I got tied up and I was _so_ disappointed!”  Nicola is caught between feeling touched that she’s made seemingly a rather large impact on this woman and wanting to bite out that Malcolm is actually still contorted with pain and she is sick with worry for him.  She feels like if she could steady herself against him, take his hand or touch him somehow, maybe she would be more able to deal with the situation. 

“Oh, I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet when I was here.  It was a fabulous visit, though.  Everyone was very welcoming.”

“I’m sorry, I know this is a terrible time to do this, but it really is just such a pleasure to meet you.”

“Oh, please don’t apologise.  It’s really lovely to have people in the sector saying you’re doing a good job.”

“Christ on fucking tightrope, Nic’la, would you stop with the ego wank and let me fucking die in peace here?!”  Malcolm’s eyes are clamped shut, but he seems to have no trouble shouting at her.  She takes this as a positive sign.  She focuses on this rather than how good it is to have someone say her name with an elided ‘o’. 

“You’re not going to die.  Wendy said she would, quote, ‘fucking murder you’ if you weren’t okay.”

“What about Wendy -?”  Malcolm begins to ask, but is interrupted by Carol announcing: “He’s a bit of a drama queen, isn’t he?”

“What did you just fucking say?”  Malcolm demands, diverted from the earlier topic of his sister, and Nicola almost laughs.  He is the definition of a toothless tiger right now, shouting abuse while completely incapable of causing damage to anyone. 

“You have no idea.”  Nicola mumbles, resisting the urge to perch on the edge of his bed and settle her hand on him somewhere.

“I want her removed.”  Malcolm’s voice is suddenly more clear, and Nicola wonders if the increase in painkillers can be having an impact already.  His gaze is steady on his nurse, and Nicola feels dread rising within her.  If he really does want her gone, then she is, in part, labouring under a misconception.  She had thought his card at Christmas may have meant he’d gone some way towards forgiving her.  She had thought the fact that he hadn’t had her thrown out as soon as she’d arrived might have meant that some part of him wanted her there.

“I haven’t even found out what’s wrong with you and you’re trying to have me kicked out?  Jesus, Malcolm!”  Nicola recognises that they are squabbling like small children, but something about him, about them when they are not together, has always brought out the petulant side of her.  Normally she would try to restrain her language in front of a voter, especially one with some affinity for her, but under the circumstances she’s barely managing to keep from shouting obscenities at him and hitting him over the head for worrying her so much.

“It’s a peptic ulcer.”  Carol supplies, and Nicola’s head pivots from glaring at her former lover to gazing at the little Welsh woman, gratitude shining in her eyes. 

“An ulcer?” 

Malcolm is too busy barking “That’s fucking confidential!  That is confidential, righ’?  I can have you fucking sacked fer that” to consider the relief in his omnishambolic ex’s voice.

Nicola lifts a shaky hand to her forehead and combs her hair back roughly.  She snorts a humourless laugh.  “You have an ulcer.  Of course you have a fucking ulcer.”

“Oh, and what’s that supposed to mean, Your Royal Shiteness?”

“That you’re the most stress-prone, toxically acidic person in the whole fucking United Kingdom!  And I’ve been to charity dinners with Gordon Ramsay.” 

“Why don’t you drop another fucking name and start calling yerself Dam Buster Murray.”

“Why don’t you shut up and let me work out exactly how worried I should be about you right now?”

“Why would you be even _vaguely_ fucking bothered by what happens to me, darlin’?”  Malcolm’s tone is dripping with disdain, and if he didn’t look like something out of The Walking Dead, she would protest that there is absolutely nothing wrong with him.

 

Nicola does not answer him because she can barely explain it to herself.  Why should she be worried about him?  Why was divorcing James after twenty years one of the easiest decisions she had to make in the 2010-2015 election cycle, but losing Malcolm after a comparatively small eight years is still causing her perceptible pain almost three years later?  Sometimes she tries to put it down to not getting enough of him.  Perhaps in a few years she would have lost her patience with his moods and workaholic tendencies (not that she has a right to complain on that front). 

“I’m fucking serious, Nic’la.  I don’ want you here.  You’re about as useful here as you were when you were the fucking Leader.  How fucking dare you presume that I - _I_ \- might fucking need _you_.  You’re an inexcusable fucking waste of an oxygen allocation and when you finally fucking do this country the service it’s owed and drop the fuck dead, it’ll be a waste of taxpayer funds on yer fucking State funeral.” 

Nicola does not break eye contact with him, and she hopes he can see the damage he’s done.  Where once she tried to conceal such damage from him, tried to show her strength by feigning invulnerability, now, years of loving him have taught her that Malcolm deserves to see the damage.  The damage hurts him too.  When she does drop her gaze her eyes land on her fingers, and she finds them trembling.  She once was well accustomed to the well forged blade that is Malcolm Tucker’s tongue, but now she is not battle ready.  She’s not sure she even wants to be anymore.  What she does know is that she has been labouring under the misapprehension that the fact that in the past they have managed to part enemies and become friends again, when they really should have parted for good, might indicate they can do the same again, might indicate that they can move on. 

 

Malcolm takes less satisfaction than he had hoped he would from seeing her face fall and pain flash in her irritatingly endearing eyes.  It’s as if she’s told him off for every single thing that’s ever passed between them simply by recalling it for a fleeting moment.  Fuck, Malcolm’s head is a mess.  He’s drugged to his eyeballs, he’s in extreme pain, and he has his fucking ex silently deconstructing what a prick he is. 

“Are there complications with the ulcer?”  Nicola asks, turning back to Carol with a level gaze.  She has, correctly, gauged that Malcolm will give her around six minutes of leniency for being such an inexcusable shit.  After this time she will have to squirrel Carol away to garner information, and she neither wants to be away from the man who looks much like a page three girl could snap him in two, not does she want to risk getting Carol fired.  Malcolm is quite correct.  She should not be disclosing such information to Nicola, and the Minister is certain Carol would not be doing so were it not for Nicola’s position. 

“We’re actually waiting on a surgeon.  She’s on call and we’re just trying to get her in at the moment.” 

Nicola’s eyes double in size and she gapes at him.  It’s a face he’s seen more times than he can count.  Shocked And Outraged Nicola Face.  He was once quite fond of it, quite fond of coaxing it out at inopportune moments.  “A-a surgeon?  Why does he need a surgeon?  Is that normal for an ulcer?”

“It’s not a normal ulcer, Nicky Darlin’.  I’ve been spewing up blood.  Literally fer once.” 

Nicola rounds on him, infuriated.  “You’ve been vomiting blood?  You’ve been fucking vomiting _blood_ and you waited until you fucking passed out at work to come to hospital?  I could fucking strangle sometimes!  Jesus, Malcolm!  You won’t let me look after you so I expect you to be a fucking grownup and look after yourself - and don’t fucking call me ‘Nicky’.”

In even marginally different circumstances, Malcolm would smile.  He likes her when she’s riled up.  He misses being able to take her by the hips once she’s angry and kissing her until she can’t remember why. 

“So what does that mean, that he’s vomiting blood?  What kind of surgery does he need?”

“We still need to do an endoscopy.  Worst case scenario that will show we need to do some keyhole surgery to repair a burst blood vessel.  It should be relatively simple.”

“Well that’s the nail in my solid Jarrah coffin of a miserable fucking life, isn’t it?  ‘Relatively simple’.  Christ in a cancer ward, famous last fucking words.”  Malcolm throws out drily.  Nicola clocks that even while she is mid way through discussing his need for surgery, he has settled his glasses back on his nose and is looking for the document she robbed him of earlier. 

“If you don’t take off your glasses, Malcolm, I’m taking your brief back to the office and shredding it.”

Malcolm doesn’t respond, nor does he remove his glasses, but he does shoot her a look which quite clearly says she is in no position to give him such directives anymore.  In different circumstances it would be ample invitation for a change of mood, for a moment of warmth between them.  Nicola is surprised at how much she has expected her love to wear away, and how markedly her expectations have not been met. 

There have been men in the last three years, of course.  There was a nice chap from the Exchequer who even lasted slightly more than four months, but it had died of natural causes that could basically be summed up as a lack of love. 

She has pushed aside the actuality that her body begs for Malcolm even though her mind has justified the whole thing within an inch of its life.  No one has ever fulfilled her like Malcolm, and the memory of nimble Scottish fingers pushing all of her buttons refuses to leave her memory.  For moths she had woken from sleep after fitful dreams craving him as if he were water or oxygen.

She had thought that, while she was never settled on the idea of building a life with Exchequer Martin, her time in another relationship had taught her that Malcolm was over, and she would go on.  Now the idea that she almost lost him today has reminded her of the depth and breadth of a love that was a best ill-conceived and at worst death marked.

She breaks the steady gaze they’ve been holding for too long, wondering what he has read in her eyes as she cycled through her idle thoughts. 

“You’re really pushing the enmity right now, Nic’la.”  Malcolm mutters, but he removes his glasses nevertheless.  Nicola can’t help but feel this is something of a victory. 

“Carol, do you have any idea how long he’s going to be in hospital?”

“I couldn’t actually say, I’m afraid.  A few days at least.”

“Okay.  Could you give us just two minutes?  If you don’t mind.”

Malcolm grumbles something about how he shouldn’t be left alone with her again, but Nicola takes no notice of him.  It’s something she’s become exceptionally good at over the years. 

“Of course.  I’ll just be outside.”

“Thank you so much.”

When she turns back to him she looks weary, battle-worn.  She curls her hands around the metal bar at the end of his bed.  “If it’s alright with you I’d really like to be adults for just a minute.”

“That’s fuckin’ fine an’ dandy with me, yer ladyship.” 

Her gaze is withering, but she goes on regardless.  “I’ve cancelled my day and you’re going to be in here until after you’ve had whatever kind of surgery they’re planning.  I have nothing to do and you, presumably, need clothes at the very least.  Why don’t you give me your keys and let me get your things.  I’ll drop them off here this evening, probably while you’re still under, and then we can go on pretending that we despise each other.”

“Who’s fuckin’ pretendin’, darlin’?  Because it sure as Satan on the shitter isn’t me.”

“Fine, keep hating me.  But let me... let me do something for you.  And for fuck’s sake don’t even think about trying to make me beg you, Malcolm, because I won’t.”

They stare each other down for a long moment, and Nicola feels a pang of loss for a life they once shared.  Eventually he relents, reaching into the drawer of the bedside table and throwing a little bunch of keys at her.  “Suit yer fucking self.”

She releases a breath.  “Good.  Good.”  He notes colour flooding her knuckles, wondering why she was gripping his bed so tightly that they went white in the first place.  She clips over to her coat, shrugging the garment on and taking up her handbag. 

On her way out she turns back to him, something on her lips that is bursting to breach its confines.  Despite everything he has said and everything that has passed between them, something about her being so singularly Nicola is almost comforting. 

“Just...”  A breath that is deliberate and full of futile wishes.  “Just...  Fucking be okay.” 

 

 

xXx

 

 

Nicola had known, of course, that it would be hard going back to the house that was once theirs.  She had not known exactly _how_ hard. 

Everything from the turn of the key and the swing of the door to the particular creaking floorboards unlocks memories which she has carefully quarantined.  She has vivid recollections of shagging on the stairs because they’d not quite made it to the bedroom, and burst faucets that caused shouting and then eventually just hours of sopping amusement while they attempted to rectify the problem until a plumber had arrived.  She is confronted with birthday cakes and nights spent lying against him while swearing at the evening news.  Nicola feels assaulted by the life she once had, and there is nothing she can do. 

Sweeping into the house as she used to every night, dumping her shoes by the door, her coat and bag on the couch, Nicola sets off for the bedroom, refusing to allow herself to stroke her hands over the benches in the kitchen that bear the scars of her cooking, or check the fridge for indications of his current eating habits.  It is no longer her place to fret over his diet.  It will not benefit her anything to remember all the sins this kitchen has witnessed, culinary or otherwise. 

Climbing up the stairs, however, she can’t help but recall all the times they failed to keep their hands off each other; times the bedroom seemed too far away and she ended up pressed against the wall or sprawled ungainly over the stairs; their carpeted edges pressing into her back and her failing to care.  Nicola breathes deeply to steady herself and clutches the banister a little tighter. 

When she gets to the threshold of the bedroom she settles her hand on the doorjamb, digging her stocking-clad toes into the soft carpet.  Part of Nicola is all too aware that this offer was a bad idea.  Throwing herself into the home where she lived so happily after encountering Malcolm properly for the first time in years is more than she should have put herself through. 

“For fuck’s sake, Nicola.”  She mutters harshly to herself before pushing off the doorjamb, batting the lights on, and crossing to the wardrobe.  The room which used to smell like a combination of the two of them is now predominantly flavoured with him, his soap and deodorant and aftershave.  The magical little combination of fragrances that make up Malcolm Tucker.  All at once she finds it soothing and unsettling.  Bending neatly she shoots an arm out under the bed and retrieves his overnight case, only realising how habitual this action is once she has flipped the bag open on the bed.  The covers are dark grey and terribly Malcolm.  They may even be ones he had before they began cohabiting; they are certainly not ones they used while together.  At present they are tugged over the bed inelegantly; a worn campaign tee shirt is crumpled and tossed over them. 

Nicola turns to the wardrobe and takes a moment before pulling open the doors.  She has avoided properly taking in the other bedside table lest she find some trace of another woman in their home, but the wardrobe will be the clearest sign of an external presence.  She readies herself to see a pair of pyjamas or tracksuit pants; maybe a woman’s coat.  Despite the fact that the notion makes her slightly bilious, she steels herself and continues with her task.  She is surprised when she opens the wardrobe; not by what she finds, but by what she doesn’t. 

There are not enough clothes to fill it, the space left by the removal of hers has been evened out by him spreading his, but the garments look sparse in a wardrobe that was clearly built for two.  Nicola makes a beeline for a plush navy jumper and a worn pair of jeans.  She selects the black belt he used to favour with jeans and rolls it neatly as he used to before a business trip.  She gathers two pairs of socks and two casual shirts, resisting the urge to drop her face into the crisp fabric and see whether he has changed laundry liquid brands.  Nicola neatly folds a few pairs of boxers and tries not to assess which of his ties are new as she does so.

After arranging his case the way he likes it and laying a folded suit bag on top of his clothes to transport the one at the hospital home in, she pads into the bathroom to fetch his wet-pack.  Opening it she checks that it is still equipped with travel sized bottles of his favourite shampoo and body wash.  She finds the body wash close to empty, and for no apparent reason she takes it upon herself to refill the bottle.  As much as she would like to deny it, some small part of her feels that this is a test, something she must do in a way that is technically perfect.  Something she must do in such a way that he can find no fault with it.  When she  reaches into the shower for the familiar orange body scrub something catches her eye, something even more familiar than his body wash: a cake of soap of the same fragrance as her favourite perfume.  It looks intermittently used, as if maybe there are some days he misses the scent of her on his skin so badly he still uses her soap.  Of course maybe she’s just being wishful. 

She finishes packing his toiletries, slipping his blood pressure medication into its regular place and retrieving his toothpaste.  He is notoriously fussy about the flavour of his mouth, which Nicola has always marvelled at, given his proclivity for Fanta.  While she has the bathroom cupboard open she manages to keep herself from dwelling on the pack of condoms sitting on the shelf.  Using every ounce of her self control she keeps herself from counting them. 

 

When she returns to the bedroom she flips the protective barrier down in the case and sets his wet-pack in its usual place, and god, how overly familiar is all this?  His habits and his foibles?  His pedantic dedication to order that he swears means he’s never forgotten anything.  She smiles at the number of times she has subtly slipped his glasses or his phone into his pocket or her handbag only to later reveal them at an opportune moment.  In the midst of this consideration she bends to collect a pair of shoes, but is stopped in her tracks by a Savile Row suit box that has the letters ‘NM’ scrawled on it in a rushed hand.  Nicola knows she should keep her mind on packing, but the temptation is too great.  She drops to the floor and pulls the box out, laying the lid on the ground beside her.

 

Nicola’s hand trembles as she parts the white tissue paper in the blue box and finds it littered with memories.  There is the tie and cufflink set she agonised over selecting for his 60th Birthday, abandoned in a box in the dark.  A leather notebook that she used to leave by the phone is tossed on the top.  She’s not thought of the little thing in years, but now that it’s here she feels the need to read it, to pour over their notes, the idle exchanges of their days. 

They vary between straightforward “3:14pm, Call Sam back”, “Katie’s lost her keys.  Where’s our set?” to messages passed while on the phone, her writing declaring “If you’re not upstairs in ten minutes I’m starting without you.” and his beseeching “for the love of fuck stop putting your hand there.”  Nicola is all at once smiling at the memories, amused at their consistent inability to keep their hands off each other, and overwhelmed with a sense of loss for their relationship.  She does not waste energy on why James was so easy to lose and Malcolm is such a lingering madness for her.  She does, however, spend it wondering why she had to ruin her own life quite so pitifully.  The contents of the box reveal fragments of this life.  There is a half empty sample bottle of her perfume.  There are used and half-slack hair-ties scattered throughout.  Crumpled receipts from her desk and bedside table drawers that she can’t quite decide why he would bother keeping are there too.  Almost everything in the box is inconsequential to the average person, but Nicola is devastated by the simplest little item.  Christmas gift tags passed between them that proclaim in her hand _To my favourite grumpy old fucker.  I’m stupidly in love with you._ Replies in his that read _To the doziest of giblets_ ; another that simply says _From your worse half_ _xxxx_.  The repeated declarations of love, albeit in their own sardonic way, are almost too much for her to bear.  Nicola opens an envelope stamped with out of date insignia for her.  It’s from her (thankfully) short period as Secretary for Culture, Media  & Sport, and it contains all the ticket stubs from the events they were required to attend.  There is every inch of the spectrum, from opera and ballet to poetry slams, cricket to roller derby.  She doubts she would recall each of them, even if she laid out all the tickets before her, but if she sat with the whole family she thinks she could piece it together.  Ben would know who won each sporting game she attended, everyone would be able to contribute which of them attended as her plus one, they would be able to number the few times they attended as a gaggle of six.  

Nicola continues to sift through the box, eight years of life reduced to a box the size of a four thousand pound suit.  There are three framed photos which she remembers consciously leaving for him, a packet of prints from a trip to Scotland, a variety of half used tubes of hand cream.  Nicola flicks through the photos, wondering why she is wilfully inflicting this pain upon herself.  They are Wend’s photos mostly, with some obviously taken by Chloé.  Nicola has always marvelled at how a man as procedural as Malcolm, whose main creative talents are spinning words and crafting passable lies, has a sister with such a genuine talent for art.  She manages to capture the reality of everyone, neither the best nor the worst unless they are being their best or worst.  That particular day everyone was rather close to their best.  Isabelle had been relaxed, leavening the rest of them relaxed by extension.  Nicola hesitates over three photos of her and Malcolm.  They are walking, Nicola two steps ahead.  Over the course of the three photos Malcolm catches her hand and closes the distance, holding their tangled fingers against his chest and muttering something in her ear.   In the last image she dissolves with laughter.  Later in the set there is a photo of Chloé leaning against Nicola’s shoulder and Nicola trailing her fingers through her hair.  They had been watching Ella, Josh and Malcolm playing fetch with Leo.  There is a notoriously bad photo of Nicola, Malcolm, and Wendy mid-conversation, obviously taken by Chloé, but shortly after it comes the tiniest moment, so fleeting Nicola is amazed even Wendy managed to capture it.  It’s nothing more than a look shared between herself and her ex-lover, but nevertheless it is the thing that tips her over the edge and brings her to tears. 

She cries because they look like they are in love.  Their eyes have met and her lips have quirked just ever so slightly, and while Nicola remembers what it felt like to be that happy, Nicola does not remember the last time she felt that happy. 

She leaves the photos scattered about her knees as she digs through the box some more.  Near the bottom she finds the card she selected for Chloé’s eighteenth Birthday.  It had been one of those trendy multi-layered paper cards with an owl on it.  The kind of thing a nineteen year old wouldn’t be embarrassed to receive, even though it bore the words ‘to our favourite niece’.  They had broken up scarcely a fortnight before her Birthday, and Nicola had had to muddle her way through a Birthday phone call and a profuse apology without tears. 

Of course Nicola knows that she should be focussing on packing Malcolm’s things, not sitting in his bedroom tormenting herself, but for some reason she can’t keep from opening the card.  There are soppy words that she’s sure all of Westminster would be amazed to learn were penned by Malcolm Tucker, but she remembers them well.  ‘ _Your auntie Nicola and I are so proud of the person you’ve become.  Don’t ever leak this to the papers or you’ll ruin our reputations._ ’  Her own hand interrupts here, an arrow towards his comment and the words _‘Ignore your uncle.  He used to keep your paintings around Number 10 when you were five.  Everyone already knows we love you to pieces.’_

Nicola chokes back a sob, fights the desire to weep for everything that once was hers.  For the man she loved and the extended family she gained.  She is not in the correct frame of mind to deal with the things that surround her.  She should never have offered this, or if she had, she certainly should not have put herself through the added pain of sticking her nose in things that should be left alone. 

Sitting here on the floor in the dimply lit room, Nicola is reminded, cruelly, of the night he left.  The way she had collapsed onto the ground because the sight of his clothes still hanging in the wardrobe had all but broken her.  Deliberately, Nicola stands, bending to gather the things and stash them back in the veritable Pandora’s Box that she has opened.  When her fingers come to the photograph that so captured her, however, she hesitates, wondering if Malcolm recalls that they had been happy once.  While she fills the box she continues to toy with this question; she is so deep in thought, that it is only when she turns back to his case that she realises the photo is still loose, and she cannot bear to put it back.  She zips his bag, ensuring she has tucked in a book for good measure, although she highly doubts he will read it. 

 

Leaving the house is, once again, complex for Nicola.  The home she built with him is so distant to her that being here again, being able to run her fingers over the all too familiar quirks of the building in which she was so happy, is altogether quite surreal.  Every inch of their home is marked with a memory, and as she leaves it, resigned to the fact that she will probably never enter it again, the memory that invades her mind is Malcolm coming home to her the night she finally told him the truth. 

 

 

xXx

 

 

When Nicola arrives back at the hospital with his things she is informed that Malcolm is still in recovery, so she takes the opportunity to sort out his room.  She hangs the suit he was brought in wearing in the suit bag she retrieved from the house, although she knows that it is too late to recover the intense wrinkles that stuffing the garments into a hospital laundry bag have caused.  For a moment Nicola holds his jacket to her, savouring the scent of his aftershave on freshly dry-cleaned suiting.  She remembers evenings being punctuated with her curling up against his suit-clad body.  She misses them.  Just as she is setting his book on the awful peach coloured bedside table, Malcolm is wheeled into the room, and her heart leaps into her mouth.

He looks even paler than he did before she left.  While Nicola knows this makes sense, she is still surprised that it is physically possible. 

 

The brunette had resolved to leave once she had been assured he was alive, but now that he’s here, semi-conscious and clammy, Nicola’s protective instincts seem to have kicked in.  At least, this is how she has justified it in her own mind.  The reality is probably closer to her simply wanting to spend some time around him when he is too incapacitated to eviscerate her.  She sinks into the chair she began the afternoon in and rests her chin on her hand, considering him at length.

He’s aged since she met him, she supposes less than he would have if he’d stayed in politics for the last ten years.  His hair is almost completely white now, but his skin is relatively unscathed by the years.  She imagines his eyes are just as blue as they’ve always been, but they had been clouded by morphine and pain when he was awake.

When Nicola eventually glances at the clock she realises she has been sitting here in silence for nearing two hours.  Bending to retrieve her phone she sees seventeen missed calls and thirty text messages.  She should have been more aware of the little device, should have been more aware of the time.  She does not regret ignoring it.  A flutter of movement across the room catches her eye, and she sees that Malcolm is coming to. 

He grunts at the sight of her.

“You know, I looked up the symptoms of an ulcer while you were under.  I almost feel like I should apologise.  Of course no one noticed you were pale, tired and breathless.  All that bollocking you do, it’s your natural state.”

“Ha fucken ha, darlin’.”  Malcolm drawls in response, but the corners of his lips have turned up slightly; the word darling does not sound like a veiled insult for the first time since the night she told him of her moronic shag with an even more moronic co-worker.  Nicola’s not quite sure how long the anaesthetic will take to fully wear off.  While he seems relatively alert, he is drifting in and out.  His eyes slip closed at random intervals, and Nicola is half convinced at each one that he is going to succumb to his need to catch up on thirty years of lost sleep. 

She knows she should leave him to his misery, should stop intruding on his recovery, but she finds herself glued in place. 

“Have you finished hating me yet?”  She says quietly, half expecting him to have passed out again.

“I’ve always fucking hated yeh, Nic’la.”  He retorts, but there is levity in his tone, the ghost of a quirk to his lips still. 

Nicola’s own lips curl in a way Malcolm himself would once have described as appealing, and the words “Is that so?” fall from them in a tender whisper. 

Another little grunt from him, one that could almost be interpreted as a chuckle. 

“If you hate me so much why do you still have my soap?”  The query is light, her eyes twinkling with amusement.  Sadly, Nicola thinks this is the most civil conversation they’ve had in years; all it’s taken is heavy narcotics.

It takes him a moment and he slurs heavily, but after a long minute Malcolm manages “Y’alwa’s smell good.”  

“Is that so?”

His eyes have closed heavily, and she thinks he may have passed out again, but a few minutes later his head turns towards her and his eyes flit open. 

“D’yeh r’member when we were happy, Nic’la?”

The slight lack of clarity in his words aside, it is the most lucid thing he has said to her.  She is so taken aback she feels her eyes moisten ever so slightly.  The “Yes” she offers him is so small she is surprised he detects it.  Part of her is itching to cross the room and take his hand, touch his hair, _something_.  Just _something_.

“Why’re yeh here?” 

The words that have been threatening to breach Nicola’s lips since she started planning her initial exit from his room that morning are right back on the tip of her tongue. 

Nicola does not manage to pull them back from the precipice before she has uttered urgently “Because I still - ”

All at once Malcolm’s eyes close and she remembers herself.  This is, of course, the most wrong moment she could possibly select to do this.  She halts herself, heart hammering, and waits to see if he will come to again, part of her knowing he will not.  Nicola sits in tense silence for ten full minutes before conceding to herself that he’s out for the rest of the night. 

She rubs a hand over her face, muttering “ _fuck”_ into her palm, and then gathers herself enough to stand and pull her coat back over herself. 

 

Nicola is about to leave his room with no intention of returning when she changes her mind and doubles back.  She takes the photograph of them that she retrieved earlier from her handbag and, resting it on his horrible apricot bedside table, scribbles a note on the back. 

Her heels click as she crosses to the wardrobe and tucks the photograph into his inside jacket pocket, taking another greedy whiff before zipping the suit bag and crossing back to the skeletal figure on the bed. 

Nicola runs her fingers through his hair gently, before, in a moment of audacity, bending to press her mouth to his. 

 

The first time Nicola kisses Malcolm since their separation he is unconscious and drugged.  She cannot imagine doing so in a situation where he was not.  His lips are dry and cracked beneath hers, but even so she has not been so pleased to feel anyone else’s mouth against her own for many years. 


	8. "Call us hopeless romantics, call it the triumph of hope over experience."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in a very long time, Malcolm allows himself to admit that he misses her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well my dears, this is the end. I know I've said that before, but I think I'm right this time. Deepest thanks to everyone who has reviewed, everyone who has left kudos, and everyone who has read this story. You are an excellent lot, and I apologise for putting you through chapter six. I realise it was evil of me. 
> 
> The chapter title belongs to the very brilliant Yvette Cooper. 
> 
> Thank you again. T x

Malcolm Tucker is explicitly banned from working once he is released from hospital.  The order does not come from his nurses, surgeon, or doctors, but rather is issued by one of very few people at his firm who outrank him.  Of course the idea of sitting at home and twiddling his thumbs for nearly three weeks is just about enough to drive Malcolm certifiably insane, but he is threatened with being immediately sacked and not being able to work potentially for months if he disagrees.  So Malcolm is forced to heed Jacqueline Mahrling’s warning and stay away from all things work related.  The phones in his office are not answered when he calls with brilliant ideas that occur to him while watching the evening news, nor are his emails.  Needless to say, it takes some getting used to for the Scot. 

 

Eventually, while whining to his sister about the sheer cruelty of his pseudo incarceration, Wendy tells him to come to Scotland and stop fucking complaining.  For once in his life Malcolm obliges his annoying little sister without complaint. 

It is Chloé who meets him when he arrives.  “Mam and Dad’re at work.”  She announces, slinging her arms around her uncle. 

“Course they are.”  Malcolm mumbles darkly, resenting anyone permitted to exercise their mind in an occupational sense who isn’t him at this moment.

“Oi, yeh’re no’ allowed to grump.  That’s the whole point of us draggin’ yer arse up here.”

“Are yeh allowed to talk like that, miss?  Because if y’are I’m going to stop censoring myself.” 

“Yeah, ‘cause I’ve never heard yeh swear before.”  

“You’re getting insolent, Chloé.”  Malcolm remarks, but there is a slight glimmer of pride in his tone.  “So, are we cabbing or - ”

Chloé dangles a set of car keys from her fingers.  “I drove.”

“Jesus fucken Christ, Chlo, can you stop growin’ up?  Yeh’re makin’ me feel old.” 

“Yeh’re gettin’ old.” 

 

Malcolm spends two weeks with Wendy, Brian and Chloé, and on one hand he is sure that spending time with his family has diffused him somewhat, has helped restore him to a healthier, slightly saner version of himself.  Contrarily, however, the lack of work has been driving him steadily mad.  Malcolm is a workaholic at the best of times, but the issue now is not even the simple fact of him lacking work to occupy him.  He has been often left to his own devices while Brian and Wendy have been at work and Chloé has been at university.  He has visited his mother as often as possible in these periods, but in the spare hours, Malcolm finds himself haunted by memories of Nicola.  It’s been some time since he’s been quite so plagued by her.

It’s the nearness of her at the hospital; her bloody maddening refusal to give him space and the resulting memories that have flooded his mind since.  She had smelt so fantastically of herself, that sweet and spicy fragrance that seems to be nowhere anymore.  His brain supplies little scenes of her, mere seconds long, that serve only to twist the knife he was sure he had managed to remove from his abdomen.  Nicola rolling her eyes at him.  Nicola fluffing her hair.  Nicola running her fingers down the pleat at the front of her dress.  Nicola.  Nicola not taking his shit and Nicola not running from him no matter how hard he tried to make her.  Nicola fighting him still to this fucking day.  And for some reason, he keeps thinking she kissed him at the hospital, but he has no real recollection of any such thing happening. 

 

Frustratingly for the Scot, Nicola is in many ways still a presence in his sister’s house, even more so that she is in his own.  Chloé wears the ring he and Nicola chose for her eighteenth Birthday still.  Malcolm had chosen her something else after he and Nicola had broken up, had ignored her text to please give the ring to Chloé anyway, and had instead walked into Tiffany’s, arbitrarily bought a silver key on a chain and given that to his niece instead, sending the ring to Nicola with the rest of her things. 

Evidently Nicola had taken it upon herself to give Chloé the ring anyway, because now it seems to be permanently on her finger, while the necklace he chose is nowhere to be seen.  He will not admit that maybe Nicola has a better sense for what Chloé likes and wears than he does. 

Malcolm knows he should not be driven slightly mad by the fact of the words _‘Happy 18th love M & N’_ on the inside of the band, pressing against his niece’s finger.  Things like this would never have happened when she was a child.  Back when she was all about dinosaurs and poo jokes Malcolm was the star of her world.  He doesn’t miss it, per se, because he loves having grown up Chloé to trade barbs and world views with, but he does miss being the person who best knew what she wanted.  Even now he would happily settle for being the person who knows what she wants better than Nicola fucking Murray, who swanned in an out of their lives as fast as her trainers and yoga-toned arse could carry her. 

“What’s on yer mind Uncle Malc?”  Chloé queries, breaking Malcolm out of his ever spiralling thoughts that will inevitably lead to the movie in his mind playing Nicola Murray’s greatest hits.  He keeps thinking this should have ended by now, after all these years. 

“Yer eighteenth.”  He answers honestly, holding out an arm and waiting for Chloé to curl into his side. 

Chloé touches her ring instinctively, and with insight that is unfair from a twenty one year old asks him gently, “You still thinkin’ ‘bout Stevie Nicks?”  His mind instantly sails back to his mother’s Birthday at his niece’s use of the almost-forgotten term of endearment. 

 

_“Can I help you with the cake, Stevie Nicks?”_

_“Of course, my darling.  You can scrape the bowl if you like, too.”_

_“I’ve said I don’t want a cake at least six times.”  Isabelle had said.  Her long silver hair was pulled into an effortlessly glamorous bun at the back of her head._

_“Well that’s a shame, because the options at this point are either I put the mixture in the oven, or Chloé and I eat all of it raw.”_

_Malcolm’s lips had quirked with the kind of respect he reserved for people who know the right tone to take with his mother._

_“I don’t mind eatin’ it raw.  Just in case it becomes an issue.”_

 

Malcolm groans, deciding not to lie to Chloé; at this age she would call him out anyway.  “I’m always fucken thinkin’ about Nic’la.” 

“You’re no’ perfect, Uncle M.” 

“Oh, what’s that supposed to mean, missy?”  His query is teasing, but he is genuinely intrigued by her assertion. 

“It means tha’ at this point by still hatin’ her yeh’re punishing yerself more than you’re punishing Nic’la.” 

He lets her words sink in.  She is, of course, correct.  He has spent years denying himself the only woman who has ever seemed to be, however inexplicably, right for him.  It’s not doing him any good.  “When did you get so much like yer mother, Chlo?”

“I was born with half her genes.  Pro’bly somewhere around conception.” 

“Are you tormentin’ yer uncle, Chlo?”  Wendy asks, walking in with a plate of oatcakes. 

“Not in any way that’s unjustified?” 

“Well tha’s fine, then.”

If Malcolm didn’t feel like the women in his life ganged up on him before this holiday, he certainly does now. 

 

 

Malcolm’s return to work is an enormous relief to the Scot.  As he is straightening his tailored suit in the mirror, Malcolm realises how much he needs the release of working, how much he relies on the chance to exercise his typically racing mind. 

Although Malcolm will not acknowledge it, his addiction to work had been somewhat under control during the years he spent with Nicola.  Before his hospitalisation, he was close to the level of fanaticism of his final few days in government, and close to the degradation in judgement that had accompanied it.  In years gone by if Nicola had been privy to him approaching this level she would have pulled him back from the brink.  He’s not even certain of how she used to do it, but he is aware that the task fell to her, rested upon her ability snap his laptop shut on his fingers, switch his phone off and march him towards the bathtub.  For the first time in a very long time, Malcolm allows himself to admit that he misses this.

 

His assistant welcomes him back to work with a cupcake.  The majority of his co-workers skirt around him as per usual; at one point he catches a group of them dividing up money from a pool on when he would return to work.  One of the bets, he discovers over lunch, is that he would top himself before the three weeks were up.  Malcolm is unimpressed with his colleagues, but this is nothing new. 

While he may be unimpressed with his colleagues, Malcolm is _delighted_ to be back at work, and much to his surprise, some of his clients are glad to have him back too.  One confesses that she performs better when he is bollocking her, and before he can catch himself he notes that he should relay all this to Nicola when he gets home.  It hurts. 

 

His PA is on strict orders to keep him working at a moderate level, so she begins hassling him to wrap things up at quarter past five.  It annoys the Scot, but he would be stupid if he didn’t give some small concession to complying with his firm’s directives. 

“Do you have your dry cleaning?”  Sarah, his assistant, asks, knowing that it’s not been done for more than a fortnight before he was taken to hospital. 

“In the corner.”  He says, gesturing vaguely to the navy blue bag that his dry cleaning gets transported in.  He is bent over his desk selecting the items that need to come home with him, glasses perched haphazardly on his nose.  Sarah collects the bag and turns, querying “Have you checked the pockets?”

“Have I checked the pockets.  Of course I’ve checked the fucking pockets, Sarah.  How many times have we gone through this routine.  Shit, if yeh didn’t have a PhD in communications I’d swear you were simple.”

“And another routine we go through every other week.”  The woman replies drily. 

Ignoring Malcolm’s protestations, Sarah dumps the contents of the bag on a nearby chair and begins sifting through each of his pockets.  She removes tissues and receipts from virtually every garment, a Curly Wurly wrapper from one jacket, and a photograph from another.  Deliberately she clips across the room and dumps the pile on his desk in front of his face. 

“Checked the pockets, eh, Malc?”  She quips as she returns to the clothing to repack it in its bag. 

“Where did you get this?”  He asks, his tone sharp, almost dangerous. 

“Your navy jacket.  Why do you sound so shitty?  You must have put it there.”

“I did no such thing.”  The same tone, the same dangerous edge.  She’s not phased, even if he decides to direct it at her she is at no fault and she knows it.  When she turns back to him he is ghost white, and she worries he may be having some kind or relapse.

“Malcolm?  What’s wrong?” 

“I don’t know when she...”

“Malcolm?”  Sarah asks again, tone becoming slightly more urgent at his ever deepening pallor.

“How did she...?” 

“Malcolm what the fuck are you talking about!”  Sarah demands, half worried and half annoyed.

“The photograph!  The fucking photo!”

“Why are you - ”

Before she can even complete her question, Malcolm is throwing his overcoat on and striding to the door.  “I have to go.”  Sarah is completely bemused by his actions.  She is left standing blankly in the middle of the room, considering the stack of documents he has abandoned in order to leave so hastily.  This is the first time she recalls him ever leaving work without taking more work with him.  Sarah is unsure of what to read into the afternoon’s events, and resolves to simply take his clothes to the dry cleaner without further consideration. 

 

 

In some ways Nicola Murray is relived she allowed herself to barge into her ex lover’s life three weeks ago.  Given, being away from him again has been hard, but she has taken some solace in them parting civilly.  Perhaps not friends, but with a lesser degree of enmity than their last parting.  Nicola mulls on this as she runs her pen through her fingers, bouncing each end of the object on her desk to reverse its direction.  She is staring at her computer, but the information is not penetrating her consciousness.  The brief her advisers have prepared for her is of course tightly written and relevant to the speech she’s been attempting to draft with Cathy and Mitchell for the past week.  Her face is resting against the heel of her hand, cheek squashed up against her palm.  She looks dejected, but in reality she is merely a little tired and a little distracted. 

She has spoken with Wendy several times over the past few weeks, and has been assured that he is his normal, miserable old self.  Nicola would be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved.  She and Chloé have organised for Chloé to spend a few days in London with her erstwhile aunt when she’s finished exams and Parliament has risen for the session.  Apparently Chloé still has twenty-first Birthday money she is in need of spending, and Oxford Street is one of her destinations of choice.  Nicola is more than happy to oblige her. 

As Nicola is pondering this, Gilly bursts through her office door, hands remaining on the edge of the door and the doorjamb respectively.  Her body language is hassled, and before Nicola notes that she seems to be blocking someone’s entrance before her eyes find that person.

“Nicola, I’m so sorry for interrupting you - ”

“Jesus, woman, I’m already in the fucking office.”  A Scottish voice grumbles loudly, and Nicola’s head lifts from her hand.

“He didn’t really give me a choice and I wanted to check with you before I called security.”

“That’s fine, Gilly.”  She says kindly before turning to her ex.  “Malcolm, what can I do for you?”  Even Nicola is impressed that she has managed to keep the slight note of hope and intrigue from her voice. 

Gilly retreats, sensing there will be warfare within Nicola’s office in the near future, and leaves the pair to their inevitable combat. 

“Where did you get this?”  He demands, offering her no preamble and slapping the photograph onto her desk. 

“It’s nice to see you too, Malcolm.  You’re looking slightly less like a reanimated corpse than the last time I saw you.”  Her observation is dry, but correct.  She had instructed Wendy to feed him up while he was in Scotland, and she is pleased to see her instructions have been heeded.  He looks less skeletal, more like the man she used to know. 

“Answer the fucking question, Nicola.”  His tone is soft and even despite the harshness of his words.  He annunciates so carefully that he does not drop the ‘o’ from her name. 

Nicola glances down and studies the image, although she has no need of doing so.  She knows it will behold her and Malcolm sharing a glance so fleeting that she almost struggles to remember such moments of warmth and intimacy even existed.

“It was at the house.”  She replies, voice soft but definitive all at once. 

When she finally looks away from the photo and up to meet his eyes again, Malcolm is staring at her, looking like he wants to yell but can’t quite decide what he would be yelling about.  Tension is rolling off him like a downpour off a windowpane, and before they’ve even really begun anything, they are at an impasse. 

Nicola glances down and unconsciously runs a finger over Malcolm’s face, staring so contentedly at her own.  Malcolm wants to rip it away from her hand, scrunch it back into his pocket, but he can’t seem to find it in him to move.  This is the first time he’s been in the Department since their breakup, and Malcolm is reminded of the first time he returned to Parliament after his incarceration.  It had been like returning to a house he had known and loved but had no longer owned.  Had he been there to visit Nicola, back in the days that was a positive thing; he’s not sure he would have coped with the visit without her presence.  He thinks he would have returned to his home and downed a considerable amount of alcohol.  Instead he had been greeted by his magnificent heap of frump, and suddenly it hadn’t seemed quite so daunting to sit in one of the Opposition offices and have a cup of tea.  Suddenly he’d not felt so anxious, like he should have been shouting at someone and hounding a journalist and writing a speech all at once.  Suddenly he had just felt like he should be having a quiet moment with an old friend. 

This feels like the exact situation all over again, but without the comfort of Nicola.  There is the memory of his sense of possession of this space, however he knows he is no longer entitled to it.  This no longer feels like the office where he and Nicola would share late night take away Chinese or Indian food because she was drowning under the volume of work, but he had known she’d needed his company.  This no longer feels like the room where sometimes they could simply not keep their hands off each other and they would shag on the desk or against the wall.  This feels like he has walked into enemy territory.  Her presence is tumultuous to him, and he is left wanting to rail against her and _just fucking forgive her_ all at once because he is simply too exhausted to fight anymore. 

While Nicola is oblivious to all this, she is not oblivious to the little huddle of her staff forming outside of her office.  She can see them debating what exactly this means, and whether or not they should actually be calling security or whether they should just let her be.  Turning his head to see what’s caught her attention and finding the huddle of her staff, Malcolm finally gathers himself enough to utter “Can we go for a walk?”

Nicola’s mouth quirks almost imperceptibly.  “A walk?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, why does everyone in my life struggle with the concept of me going fer a walk?  Jesus Christ, can we just go f’r a fucking walk without the third degree?”

Nicola holds up her hands in surrender and mumbles the word ‘fine’, rising from her chair to slide on her coat.  When she stands Malcolm sees that she is wearing a watermelon coloured pencil skirt.  While she is slipping on her sensible black heels, she glances up and catches him fighting a smile. 

“What?”  She demands.

Malcolm manages to conceal the fact that he is absolutely overwhelmed with affection for the maddening woman before him.  After an uncomfortable beat he mutters “That skirt is way too fucking loud.”

Nicola buttons her coat huffily.  Totally missing the softness in his tone, she bites back “So is you fucking mouth.” 

Emerging from the office, Nicola says “Everyone, I’m going for a walk with Thoroughly Monstrous Malcolm.  I’ll be back soon.  If I’m not, send a search party.” 

“A walk?”  Cathy queries with a frown.  The look Nicola shoots her in return is enough to silence everyone, and she and Malcolm make it out of the building without him setting fire to anyone with the power of his tongue. 

Malcolm strides out of Richmond House, taking in the cold London air like it’s curing him of a terminal illness.  Nicola considers the action without commenting on it, clipping beside him down Victoria Embankment.

“Are you actually going to say anything to me, or are we just going to walk?”  Nicola barbs. Malcolm does not respond to her, but continues until they have reached the approximate middle of Westminster Bridge.  Malcolm leans against the green railing, staring out at the Palace of Westminster.  The sky is a violent pink as the sun drops, and Malcolm wonders how the sky can be so lovely when the air is so cold. 

“What did yeh mean, Nic’la?”  Malcolm asks after a long silence. 

“Excuse me?”  She frowns, genuinely uncertain of what he’s talking about.  Malcolm extracts the photograph from his coat pocket again, passing it to her.  She’s not sure when he collected it from her desk; probably as she was putting on her shoes. 

He has handed her the photo to her upside down, so this time her eyes fall on her handwriting rather than their faces. 

_Because I still feel like this._

“You asked me why I came to the hospital.”  The brunette replies.  She sounds as battle-worn as Malcolm feels.

“I asked you why yeh came to the hospital.”  It’s as if he’s trying to process the sentence in his mind.  His tone is distant, and for no real reason it reminds her of the far-off way he had rolled the idea of her Fourth Sector launch around in his mind; as if something about it simply didn’t compute.  “I don’t remember askin’ why yeh came t’the hospital.”  His accent is thick tonight; it has the unfortunate consequence of making Nicola want to touch him.  Just gently.  Just reach out and settle her hand on his back. 

Her breath is beginning to cloud the air, but this is the only sign she notes of the ever dropping evening temperature.

“You were on quite a lot of painkillers at that point.”

Malcolm is not looking at her; she’s unconvinced he’s really looking at Parliament either.

“My PA found it in my pocket today.” 

“Right.  Right.  I just... assumed that you’d seen it.  I thought maybe.  I’m not sure what I thought.  I thought it was a run of the mill rejection, not a failure to communicate.”  She pauses to take a steadying breath.  “I thought you just didn’t want to speak to me still.”

“Is this one of your fucking panic reactions, or do you mean that?” 

“What exactly does that mean?”  Nicola is bristling with the injustice of his comment, and he can all but feel the temperature of her blood increasing.  Malcolm is not about to let her hog the anger.

“It means was this you flyin’ off the fucking handle because you thought I was about to shuffle off this mortal wanking coil or did you actually fucking _mean_ this?”  For the first time he is facing her, and they are squaring off like they used to back in his political heyday.  Malcolm refuses to admit that he’s a little turned on by it.

“Of course I fucking meant it you absolute fucking arsehole!  How could you even _ask_ me that at this point?  I sat in that fucking hospital room with you for _hours_ with you abusing me at every turn and you have the fucking temerity to ask me if I meant that I still love you?” 

“Yeah well maybe that’s because you went and fucked someone else!”  If the people around them are beginning to stare, neither member of the couple takes notice.

“Shitting Christ, Malcolm it’s been years!  And can you disabuse yourself of the notion that you’re the only one of us who’s ever been wronged by the other?  You almost destroyed my entire fucking career and I still showed up to pick up your pieces when your life was falling apart so why don’t you sing from a new fucking song sheet!”

“How dare you.”  Malcolm’s voice has dropped to that deliciously dangerous little growl.  Nicola refuses to acknowledge that she likes it just a bit.  “How fucking dare you compare work to this.”

“Oh come on, Malcolm.  Neither of us is naive enough to think there wasn’t something deeply _fucking_ personal about the way you took me down in front of the whole fucking Kingdom!  That was all about your issues with me, because if it was just about the good of the Party then you would have done it privately and you fucking know it.”

“Yeah well darlin’ I don’t think the woman who let Andrew fucking Watckins tinker around her twat is the best judge of what’s public and what’s personal.” 

Before she can stop herself, Nicola strikes him.  She hits him for everything he’s put her through as long as she’s known him, and she hits him for being so fucking hateful and she hits him because some deranged part of her thinks that maybe she can beat him into remembering that he does, actually, still love her.

“Don’t you ever fucking speak to me like that again.  Okay?  I’ve apologised to you enough.  It’s been years, and if you can’t move on from this then I’m going back to my office and I actually am going to call security.  And this time you won’t be able to sweet talk your fucking way in because Gary on reception remembers that you used to always just pop in to see Claire.”

Malcolm’s cheek is stinging.  He has never really thought she had it in her to hit him, and part of him is grudgingly impressed. 

“That was a solid fucking slap, pet.”  He mutters, hand covering the mark hers has left. 

“Have you been listening to me?”  She retorts, voice still too loud for the public setting.  “Because you know I have actually survived without you and, alright, it’s not always been easy but I’ll fucking do it again if you keep _refusing_ to - ”

Before Nicola can truly work to the full fever pitch that her tirade warrants, Malcolm has taken her face in his hands and is kissing her hard.  He is fast and demanding like a man who has been starved of water for a week and has stumbled on a waterfall.  The first time Malcolm Tucker kisses Nicola Murray since their breakup she tastes like fruit salad and Lemon Zinger, and home.  She tastes like the most perfectly omnishambolic thing on the face of the Earth, and Jesus fucking Christ, Malcolm has missed the taste of her. 

His tongue invades her mouth before she even has a chance to process what is happening, but god, even if she can’t quite work out the implications of it she inexpressibly glad to have his mouth on hers again.  She knots her hand through ever greying hair and pulls him closer to her by the collar of his coat, wanting to get as much of him as she can before he inevitably remembers himself and returns to hating her.  Nicola keeps him to her until her brain is screaming her need for oxygen at her and she is genuinely concerned that she may faint.  Much to her surprise, when they break away, Malcolm’s lips find her cheek, her jawbone, her earlobe.  His hands do not leave her body.  Nicola resists the urge to draw conclusions from this action. 

“There’s no one else, yeh know.”  Malcolm mumbles, and while he sounds breathless, Nicola doesn’t think he sounds like he’s hallucinating.

“What?”  Is all she seems to be able to muster.  Between his hands gripping onto her and the frigid air cooling the patches of her skin his lips have warmed and his fucking _voice_ vibrating against her she is impressed she’s managed it at all.

“The enduring fact of my cluster-fuck of a life, Nicola Murray, is it seems I am fucking doomed to you.” 

“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it, Malcolm.  I won’t fucking cope.”  There is a catch in her voice, and she hates that her eyes are moistening ever so slightly.  

“D’yeh think my life wouldn’t be a whole metric fuckton easier if I didn’t?”

Nicola frowns but doesn’t pull away from him, still more than a little worried that if she does he may totally change his mind.  “There were way too many negatives in that sentence.”

“See?  You’re already correcting my fucking syntax and we’ve only been on proper speaking terms for ten minutes.” 

“I love you.”  Nicola mumbles against his chest, inhaling the intoxicating smell of dry-cleaned wool that’s had clementines eaten in it. 

Malcolm pulls back from her, holding her gently by her shoulders and seeking out her eyes.  “Unfortunately darlin’, I fucking love you too.” 

The first time Nicola kisses Malcolm (while he is conscious) since their breakup, she resolves to never let him deprive her of the many talents of his mouth ever again.   

 


End file.
